Features

Kidnapper may be first to hand over DNA 

LIVERMORE — Philip Hunter, who is accused of kidnapping a 14-year-old girl, may be one of the first Californians required to provide a DNA sample under a new state law. 

The law sponsored by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, added robbery, arson, burglary and carjacking to nine other crimes already eligible for DNA testing, such as murder, sexual assault and kidnapping. 

Hunter, 37, has four prior burglary convictions. He is accused of grabbing the teen-ager as she walked to school last week and forcing her into the trunk of his car. Hunter appeared to be headed for a remote location, possibly to commit a sexual assault, before the girl escaped near Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, police said. 

Livermore police said several agencies contacted them last week about Hunter in connection with similar, unsolved crimes. 

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who backed the legislation, says Hunter’s case demonstrates how common it is for allegedly violent criminals to have prior burglary convictions. 

“Forty-three percent of the convicted sexual offenders in California have a prior burglary conviction,” Lockyer said.  

Man stabs wife, kills her friend 

OAKLAND — A man on parole for severely beating his wife five years ago was arrested Monday after allegedly stabbing his wife and killing one of her friends with a 10-inch carving knife, police said. 

James T. Mayberry, 44, called police around 3 a.m. on Monday, told the dispatcher he had stabbed his wife, and then left the house, investigators said. He was arrested a few blocks away. 

Police found Mayberry’s wife, LaShone Mayberry, 33, barely alive in a bedroom, and her friend, Kathy Mitchell, 38, dead. The couple’s three children were asleep in the living room during the incident and were unhurt. 

Oakland Police Department Sgt. Jeff Ferguson, who interviewed James Mayberry with Sgt. Gus Galindo, said Mayberry allegedly claimed the stabbing resulted from an argument that started over him drinking some of the women’s beer. 

Mayberry, who worked as a cook at a Berkeley restaurant, was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and domestic violence in 1998. He was sentenced to five years in prison and paroled last April on the condition that he stay away from his wife, authorities said. 

Mayberry was arrested on suspicion of two counts of murder and is being held without bail at the Oakland City Jail. If convicted, he could face the death penalty, authorities said. 

Hoover Tower bells return to Stanford 

STANFORD — The 48 bells of the Hoover Tower carillon have returned home after a two-year trip to their birthplace in Belgium. 

Installation of the first bells began Tuesday morning, said Craig Snarr, Facility Manager for the Hoover Institution. 

Snarr said the bells range from 4 inches to 4 feet tall and weigh between a few pounds to 2.5 tons. 

The bells had been removed from Stanford and sent to the Royal Eijsbouts bell foundry in Ostend, Belgium, as part of a restoration project. 

The carillon’s automatic-play drum, which rotates in a manner similar to a music box activating hammers on the outside of about half the carillon’s bells, also is being restored. It was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. 

The carillon was built in 1938 by the Michiels bell foundry in Belgium and was part of the New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940. After the fair ended, the Belgian American Educational Foundation purchased the carillon and presented it to the Hoover Institution in appreciation of Herbert Hoover’s famine relief efforts in Europe following World War I.