Andrew Urdiales: the ex-Marine convicted in two states, and the gun that tied him to eight killings

• Born1964; grew up in the Chicago area
• Marine Corps1984–1991, Camp Pendleton and Twentynine Palms; honorably discharged
• KillingsEight women, 1986–1996: five in Southern California, three in Illinois
• ArrestedApril 1997, Chicago, after ballistics tests matched his gun
• IllinoisTwo murders, Cook County (2002); one murder, Livingston County (2004). Death sentences, both later commuted to life
• CaliforniaFive murders, Orange County, 23 May 2018; sentenced to death 5 October 2018
• DiedFound unresponsive in his cell at San Quentin on 2 November 2018, aged 54; investigated as a suicide

Andrew Urdiales killed eight women over ten years. The first five died in Southern California between 1986 and 1995, while he was a Marine stationed there and in the years after. The last three died around Chicago in 1996, after he had moved home and taken a job as a security guard. He was caught in 1997 because of a handgun Indiana police had confiscated from him months earlier, and once detectives told him the bullets matched, he confessed, then mentioned, without being asked, that California might want to talk to him too.

It took more than two decades for the courts to finish with him. Illinois convicted him of the three murders there in 2002 and 2004 and twice sentenced him to death; both sentences were later commuted to life in prison. California charged him in 2009, brought him west in 2011 and convicted him of the other five in 2018. He was sentenced to death again in October 2018 and was found dead in his cell at San Quentin less than a month later.

This account rests on the Illinois Supreme Court’s 2007 opinion in his appeal, the press releases of the Orange County District Attorney and the California prison system, and coverage by the Associated Press, CBS, NBC, WBEZ and others, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. The women he killed and their families are not named here, and neither is the woman who survived an attack by him in 1992 and later told her story on television.

Chicago and the Marines

Urdiales was born in 1964 and grew up in the Chicago area. After high school, in April 1984, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served for seven years, first at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County and later at Twentynine Palms in the desert east of Los Angeles, and was honorably discharged in April 1991.

Mission Viejo, 1986

On the night of 18 January 1986 a 23-year-old student at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, in Orange County, was walking to her car after volunteering as an usher at a jazz piano concert on campus. Urdiales, then stationed at Camp Pendleton, attacked her in the dark parking lot and stabbed her to death. The case went unsolved for eleven years.

The two sides gave different accounts of why. According to the Illinois Supreme Court’s summary of his confession, he told police he had been upset about friendships on the base and set out to rob someone. Prosecutors in Orange County told the jury that he had gone looking for a woman to kill and had chosen her at random.

The desert, 1988–1995

The next four killings took place in Riverside and San Diego counties. Prosecutors said the victims of these later killings were women he picked up who were working as prostitutes.

• July 1988, Riverside County: a 29-year-old woman was shot in the head at a remote spot. Most reports place the killing near Cathedral City; the district attorney’s account says she was picked up in Indian Wells.
• September 1988, San Diego: a 31-year-old woman was shot in the head and left in an alley.
• April 1989, Palm Springs: a young woman was shot several times on a vacant lot. The AP gives her age as 18; other reports say 20.
• March 1995, near Palm Springs: a 32-year-old woman was killed in the desert while Urdiales, by then out of the Marines for four years, was in California on vacation.

1992: the woman who got away

In September 1992, on another trip to the Palm Springs area, Urdiales picked up a 19-year-old woman, kidnapped and sexually assaulted her, and locked her in the trunk of his car. She managed to escape, and two Marines who came across her helped her to safety. He later confessed to the attack, but he was never tried for it; prosecutors presented it as evidence in aggravation when they asked for the death penalty.

She told her story publicly years later, including on the CBS programme 48 Hours Mystery in 2010 and in the first episode of the A&E series I Survived a Serial Killer in 2021. Some television listings give her age at the time as 17; the court record and the AP say 19.

Back in Chicago

After his discharge in 1991 Urdiales moved back to the Chicago area to live with his parents and found work as a security guard. Between 1991 and 1996 he was seen regularly by a psychologist at the Veterans Administration, about 105 times by the count given in court, who diagnosed mild depression and avoidant personality disorder.

In 1996 he killed three young women in quick succession. A 25-year-old woman from Hammond, Indiana, was killed in April and a 22-year-old from Chicago in the summer; both were found in Wolf Lake, a lake in Cook County on the Indiana line. In July a 21-year-old woman, also from Hammond, was found in the Vermilion River near Pontiac, in Livingston County, about 90 miles southwest of the city. All three had been shot in the head and stabbed, and ballistics tests showed the bullets had come from the same .38-calibre gun.

A loitering stop in Hammond

In November 1996 police in Hammond stopped Urdiales in his truck in an area known for prostitution and arrested him for loitering. He had a handgun with him that he had no permit to carry, and officers confiscated it.

According to the Illinois Supreme Court’s account, the Hammond officer who had made that arrest took a complaint on 1 April 1997 from a woman who said Urdiales had wanted to take her to Wolf Lake and handcuff her. The officer passed the information to Chicago detectives, who had the confiscated gun tested. It matched the bullets from all three Illinois killings.

Chicago police picked him up in late April 1997. When officers told him the three women had been killed with his gun, the court’s opinion records, he took off his security guard badge, began removing his shoelaces and said, “Well, I guess I’m not going to work today.” He then gave detailed confessions to the three Illinois murders and, without prompting, told detectives about “some matters” that California authorities might be interested in. Over the following days he confessed to the five California killings, with details that investigators said only the killer would know.

Illinois: two trials and two commutations

In Cook County he was tried for the two Wolf Lake murders in 2002. The jury rejected his claim that he was insane, convicted him and sentenced him to death. Sources disagree on the date of that sentence: the California prison system gives 30 May 2002, while the Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion gives 3 September 2002. On 10 January 2003 Governor George Ryan commuted the sentence to natural life in prison without parole.

The Livingston County case went ahead separately. Urdiales offered to plead guilty but mentally ill; prosecutors disputed that he was mentally ill, and after a hearing the trial judge found him guilty of murder. In 2004 a jury sentenced him to death. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence in February 2007.

That second death sentence lasted until March 2011, when Governor Pat Quinn signed the law abolishing the death penalty in Illinois and commuted the sentences of all fifteen men still on its death row, Urdiales among them, to life without parole.

California: the case that waited

California investigators had his confessions from 1997, but he was serving life in Illinois. In August 2009 the Orange County District Attorney charged him with all five California killings, and in December 2009 an Orange County grand jury indicted him on five counts of murder with special circumstances. The district attorneys of Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties agreed to try all five cases together in Orange County. He was extradited from Illinois in October 2011, and that month prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty.

The trial did not begin until March 2018. His lawyers asked the jury for second-degree murder verdicts, arguing that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and childhood trauma had shaped what he did. On 23 May 2018 the jury convicted him of five counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, including lying in wait. On 13 June, after about a day of deliberation, the same jury recommended death.

He was formally sentenced to death on 5 October 2018. In court he apologised and said that, had he been on the jury, he would probably have voted the same way.

San Quentin

Urdiales arrived on California’s death row at San Quentin on 12 October 2018. At about 11:15 on the night of Friday 2 November, officers making a security check found him unresponsive, alone in his cell in the prison’s Adjustment Center. He was pronounced dead shortly after midnight. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said his death was being investigated as a suicide. He was 54. Because he died within weeks of sentencing, no appeal of his California conviction was ever decided.

Where the accounts differ

• The first killing: robbery, by his own account to police, or a deliberate search for a random woman to kill, as prosecutors argued.
• The 1988 Riverside County killing: Cathedral City in most reports, Indian Wells in some.
• Ages: the 1989 Palm Springs victim was 18 or 20; the woman who survived in 1992 was 19 or, in some television listings, 17.
• The Cook County death sentence: 30 May 2002 or 3 September 2002.
• Commutations: some 2018 reports credit Governor Ryan with the 2011 commutation. Ryan commuted the Cook County sentence in 2003; the Livingston County sentence was commuted by Governor Quinn in 2011.

The portrait

The drawing above is a crop of Urdiales’s coloring page in the True Crime Activity Book for Adults. The full page surrounds his face with the case: a Marine in dress uniform, a pistol, the car with its trunk open, a pay phone and the number eight. The same book has pages for Harold Shipman, Charles Cullen and Christine Falling, each with its own case file here.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. People v. Urdiales, No. 98996 (opinion filed 16 February 2007, modified 29 May 2007)Supreme Court of Illinois
2. Convicted Illinois serial murderer charged with murdering five Southern California womenOrange County District Attorney, 5 August 2009
3. Convicted Illinois serial murderer indicted for murdering five Southern California womenOrange County District Attorney, 14 December 2009
4. Two condemned inmates’ deaths being investigated as suicidesCalifornia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 5 November 2018
5. Security guard suspected in 8 killings (wire services)The Spokesman-Review, 26 April 1997
6. OC officials want former Marine convicted Illinois serial killer back in Southland for 5 murdersCBS Los Angeles, March 2011
7. Killer escapes death in Illinois, but still may be executedCBS Chicago, March 2011
8. Ex-Marine convict faces charges in 5 Calif deaths (Associated Press)ABC7 San Francisco, October 2011
9. Illinois convict faces charges in 5 SoCal deaths (Associated Press)CBS Los Angeles, October 2011
10. California seeks death for Chicago serial killerWBEZ Chicago, 27 October 2011
11. Disturbing Southern California serial killings trial comes to a closeNBC Los Angeles, May 2018
12. Ex-Marine convicted of first-degree murder in SoCal serial killingsNBC Los Angeles, 23 May 2018
13. Convicted killer found guilty of 5 California murders (Associated Press)Fox News, 23 May 2018
14. Former Marine found guilty of 5 California murders (Associated Press)Marine Corps Times, 24 May 2018
15. Ex-Marine who killed 3 Illinois women convicted of 5 more murders in Calif.CBS News, 24 May 2018
16. Andrew Urdiales case: jury recommends death penalty for convicted serial killerABC7 Los Angeles, 13 June 2018
17. Jury recommends death penalty for ex-Marine who killed 5 SoCal womenFox 11 Los Angeles, 13 June 2018
18. Illinois killer sentenced to death for 5 California murders (Associated Press)Fox News, 5 October 2018
19. Ex-Marine serial killer who slayed 5 SoCal women gets death penaltyCBS Los Angeles, October 2018
20. 2 death row inmates found dead by suicide in Calif. prison (San Diego Union-Tribune)Corrections1, 6 November 2018
21. Serial killer and high-profile murderer believed to have killed selves on death rowNBC 7 San Diego, 5 November 2018
22. Ex-Marine serial killer found dead in San Quentin cell; suicide suspectedTimes of San Diego, 5 November 2018
23. Chicago serial killer Andrew Urdiales found dead in San QuentinCBS Chicago, 5 November 2018
24. 48 Hours Mystery: “The One Who Got Away” (23 October 2010)TheTVDB episode listing
25. I Survived a Serial Killer, season 1, episode 1: “Desert Demon” (2021)TVmaze episode listing

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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