CASE OF INTEREST

Date:       September 3, 2004
Case:       People v Rufus Kelsaw
Contact:   Laurie Earl, Major Crimes, (916) 874-5430

District Attorney Jan Scully announced that Rufus Kelsaw was sentenced today to Life in Prison for the April 2002 kidnapping and killing of 19 year-old Mi’Angelo Cordero.

The defendant, apparently angered by a comment he had been told the victim made about him, convinced a female cousin to pick up Cordero and bring him to a room at the Motel 6 on Elsie Avenue in south Sacramento.  Upon entering the room the victim was handcuffed and severely beaten for several hours by Kelsaw and other unknown assailants.  Kelsaw then drove the victim to the parking lot of the Costco store located off of Exposition Blvd.  From there Kelsaw led Cordero from the car to a fence adjacent to the parking lot.  After telling the victim to turn around so he could remove his handcuffs, Kelsaw shot Cordero in the back of his head with a gun held at very close range.  Kelsaw then fled with his female cousin.  Detectives from the Sacramento Police Department arrested Kelsaw four months later after a lengthy and often fruitless investigation.

After a lengthy jury trial, Kelsaw was convicted of Kidnap and Murder with Special Circumstances.  Laurie Earl, who prosecuted the case said that the jury relied in part upon the testimony of Kelsaw’s cousin, physical evidence that supported her testimony and Kelsaw’s faulty alibi that was disproved with the defendant’s own cell phone records.  Earl described the 24 year-old Kelsaw as “a danger to society who had slipped through the hands of law enforcement before and deserves every day of his life sentence.”