LOS ANGELES — A 47-year-old man was sentenced today to 11 years in state prison for the 2009 murder of a woman whose body was discovered behind a wall in a Lomita residence.
Randolph E. Garbutt of Los Angeles pleaded guilty last month to one felony count of voluntary manslaughter.
On July 2, 2015, the body of Raven Campbell, 37, the suspect’s roommate, was excavated from behind a wall at a residence in the 26800 block of Western Avenue in unincorporated Lomita. The victim had been missing since June 2009, the prosecutors said. Officials determined blunt force trauma by a hammer to be the cause of death.
NBC LA reported: Garbutt told investigators that he was afraid he would be blamed after she slipped and fell in the apartment and that he then put a plastic bag over her head and choked her to death, the Daily Breeze reported in 2016.
But at a hearing in which a judge found sufficient evidence to allow the case to proceed to trial, a friend testified that Garbutt told her that he hit Campbell with a hammer and that he said “God wanted her,” according to the newspaper.
