Man Gets Life Term for Mail Bomb Killing

COSTA MESA — A Costa Mesa man who sent a package bomb to a transsexual, killing her roommate instead, was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court Friday to two consecutive life terms.

Prosecutors said Darryl Anthony Carr, 35, sent the explosive device in an act of revenge against Martha Galindo, a preoperative transsexual who had refused to become his girlfriend.

Instead, the blast fatally injured Peter Marshall, 36, who shared an apartment with Galindo in Santa Ana.

“It is the intention of this court that the defendant spend the rest of his natural life in prison,” U.S. District Judge Manuel Real said in handing down the sentence in Los Angeles.

Witnesses testified during a jury trial that Carr fell in love with Galindo after he began paying her for sex in 1995. They said he became angry when she spurned his advances for a more meaningful relationship, and that he once tried to run her down with his car and later tried to blow up her boyfriend’s truck.

Prosecutors say Carr finally snapped after Galindo refused to hold his hand in a movie theater. Days later, on Feb. 6, 1998, he sent the mail bomb.

The package was addressed to “Jenny,” which was Galindo’s street name. Galindo testified she feared it was a bomb and refused to open it. But she said Marshall dismissed her concerns and took the package into the kitchen to open it. It exploded in his hands. He lingered in a coma for four months before dying.