Los Angeles – Juan Corona, who gained the nickname “The Machete Murderer” for hacking to death dozens of migrant farm laborers in California in the…
Los Angeles – Juan Corona, who gained the nickname “The Machete Murderer” for hacking to death dozens of migrant farm laborers in California in the early 1970s, has died. He was 85.
Corona died Monday at an undisclosed hospital, Vicky Waters of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported. He had been serving a life sentence in state prison.
A labor contractor who hired thousands of fruit and vegetable workers for Northern California farmers, Corona killed 25 of them, according to authorities who arrested him in 1971.
The bodies were buried in shallow graves on farms and orchards along the Feather River north of Sacramento. Most had been brutally hacked to death and dismembered, possibly with a machete or meat cleaver. One was shot in the head.
“It was a gruesome manner of killing. He hacked these people to death,” Sutter County District Attorney Amanda Hopper told The Associated Press after attending the last of Corona’s eight unsuccessful parole hearings in 2016.
He was arrested after a peach farmer who had contracted with him for hired pickers became suspicious upon finding a hole that had been freshly dug, then filled in.
