From City News Service:

LOS ANGELES — An ex-felon was convicted today of stabbing to death a Monrovia couple in their 70s who were “like family” to him.
Alfredo Montez Valenzuela, 38, faces a possible death sentence for the July 2003 killings of 78-year-old Clark Shaum and his 70-year-old wife, Bernice.
Valenzuela was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, first- degree residential robbery, first-degree burglary and unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle. Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during the commission of a burglary and robbery.
The penalty phase of trial, during which jurors will recommend whether Valenzuela should be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole, will begin Friday before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito.
Deputy District Attorney Brook White told jurors during the trial that Clark Shaum was stabbed 113 times and his wife was stabbed more than 40 times.
Valenzuela — who had known the couple through his father since he was a child — initially denied involvement in the crimes, describing the couple as being “like family,” the prosecutor said.
But White said Valenzuela later admitted involvement in the slayings, telling authorities, “When I went in, Bernice woke up. I got scared … I wasn’t planning on doing that … I didn’t want to go back to prison.”
Valenzuela told authorities that he stabbed Clark Shaum “a lot of times” because “he wouldn’t die,” according to the prosecutor.
Valenzuela’s attorney, Jeffrey Brodey, told jurors the defense has “never denied that it was Alfredo Valenzuela who committed these murders.”
But he said Valenzuela’s then-girlfriend, Shawna Robles, “was the architect of that crime” because she needed money to pay a bill for storage and was “able to browbeat and badger Alfredo” after meeting him on a jail bus in 2000 and coming to live with him after each were released from custody.
“She challenged Alfredo’s masculinity … she controlled all aspects of their life,” Brodey said. “She was like the man who came to dinner and never left … Once she was there, she sort of took over the house.”
Valenzuela’s attorney said Robles, who was at the crime scene, was “far more intelligent and definitely the leader” and gathered up some of the couple’s belongings after the two were killed.
Robles was tried separately, with a jury convicting her in April 2008 of first-degree murder and other charges in the couple’s slaying. That jury recommended that Robles be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — a sentence handed down in June 2008.