Jury votes death for killer of 8-year-old

MARTINEZ, CALIF. — A jury Friday ordered the death penalty for a child molester found guilty of raping and murdering an 8-year-old San Pablo girl in 1979.

The same Contra Costa County jury convicted Joseph Cordova, 62, of first-degree murder last month in the attack on Cannie Bullock after DNA evidence linked him to the crime. Jurors handed up the death sentence after a day and a half of deliberations.

Prosecutors and jurors said the sentence was a formal gesture because Cordova, who has diabetes and hepatitis, will probably die of natural causes before he is executed.

“The death penalty is our ultimate penalty. Whether it’s a reality or not, it’s the worst,” prosecutor Dara Cashman said after the hearing. “He needed to be labeled the worst of the worst. Whether [death] is imposed, that’s secondary.”

At the time of her killing, the girl was home alone while her mother was at a bar. Her body was found under a blanket in her backyard Aug. 24, 1979.

Cordova didn’t become a suspect until 2002, when investigators used a national database to link his DNA to sperm found at the crime scene. He was serving time in a Colorado prison for molesting a 12-year-old boy.

During the trial, Cordova’s attorney said his client had a sexual relationship with the mother, Linda Bullock Baum, and had slept with her before the murder, suggesting that that might have accounted for the sperm.