SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON, Calif. (AP) — State prison officials say the death of a condemned California inmate is being investigated as a suicide.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Monday that 58-year-old Kenneth Friedman was pronounced dead early Sunday after being found in his cell.
Friedman was sentenced to death in December 2005 after pleading guilty to the murder of two men who were strangled with telephone chords after being abducted from their job at a telecommunications store in Torrance.
The victims were 26-year-old Peter Kovach, a former drug dealer who had fallen out with a gang, and Kovach's co-worker, 29-year-old Ted Gould.
The CDCR said there have been 21 death row suicides since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978.
There are currently 728 condemned inmates in California.
Read more: SF Gate
Kenneth Friedman
Date of crime: 10/26/94
"Kenneth pled guilty to kidnapping and strangling Peter Kovach and Ted Gould to death. Kenneth’s brother and Howard Bloomgarden led a drug ring, and they believed Kovach stole money from them. They ordered Kenneth to kill Kovach. Gould was merely an innocent bystander and pleaded for his life, and Friedman responded by strangling him with a telephone cord. Kenneth was convicted in 1996 on federal racketeering charges. After he exhausted all his federal appeals he was brought to California on the state murder charges. "
No comments:
Post a Comment