Leighton Dorey IV appears in a May 31, 2017 evidence photo. Note the bandaged right hand.
A Southern California man was found guilty of murdering his own father on Wednesday.
Leighton Bromiluy Dorey IV, 44, was convicted of murder in the first degree over the 2017 slaying of 71-year-old Leighton Dorey III, who was killed in his own home in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
The victim’s body was found on May 30, 2017 when his wife returned home. At first unidentified, authorities would later assess that Mr. Dorey was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, neck and torso.
The younger Dorey was quickly identified as the likely suspect and then arrested deep in the woods of Idyllwild in Riverside County without incident by law enforcement task force members.
The now-convicted patricidal killer was tried twice in the case.
The first trial, in 2019, resulted in a hung jury. There was a lone holdout who refused to convict. During that trial, prosecutors offered a motive of financial frustration succumbing to rage after Mr. Dorey refused to continue supporting his adult son. The defendant had just returned from living in France for four years and was upset at being cut off, prosecutors alleged, according to the Times of San Diego.
Deputy District Attorney Patricia Lavermicocca said the abrupt arrival of the younger Dorey soon devolved into violence, torture, and ultimately death–and that the resulting scene was gruesome.
The defendant’s stepmother arrived home to find her husband’s “bloody, brutally beaten, strangled and tortured body,” Lavermicocca said, according to Times reports. She went on to describe a corpse with significant injuries, including numerous fractures, a broken nose, a broken jaw. Some of the deceased’s skin…
