Jenkins-Pietrzak was naked, bound and had been sexually assaulted. Her husband had been beaten and hog-tied. There were racial slurs — intended to mislead investigators into thinking the killings were racially motivated — spray-painted throughout the home and someone had set small fires inside, in an attempt to burn down the house, prosecutors said.
Kevin Cox looks around the courtroom during in his trial on Tuesday, May 28, in Riverside. Cox is one of three former Marines on trial for murder in the death of a Marine sergeant and his wife in French Valley.
Three former U.S. Marines now on trial for murder tormented and killed a French Valley couple for the sadistic pleasure of it, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday, May 29.
“These were intelligent, capable trained men,” prosecutor Daniel DeLimon said, men in whom the Marine Corps had placed its trust.
“Unfortunately … that trust was misplaced,” he said.
The defendants, DeLimon said, were leading double lives: “Marines by day, criminals by night.”
Sgt. Jan Pietrzak, 24 – a helicopter mechanic – and his wife, Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, were newlyweds and had been living in their Bermuda Street house for only a few months when a group of Camp Pendleton Marines armed with guns came to their door in the wee hours of Oct. 15, 2008, prosecutors have said.
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