Ex-security guard charged with murders of pregnant woman, husband at Calif. beach home

Murder charges filed in Calif beach house killings

VENTURA, Calif. — An unemployed security guard was charged Tuesday with murdering a pregnant woman and her husband after slipping into their Southern California beach house during a robbery.

Joshua Graham Packer, 20, of Ventura was charged with three counts of murder in the stabbing deaths of Brock and Davina Husted and their unborn child. Davina Husted was about five months pregnant.

The charges carry special allegations that could make Packer eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Packer also was charged with burglary, robbery and use of a gun.

“It is a triple homicide, so the death penalty is on the table,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Frawley said.

Prosecutors, however. don’t intend to decide whether to seek the death penalty for several months.

Authorities said the attack didn’t appear to be random, but investigators were still trying to confirm a link to Packer.

“We believe, odds are, that he targeted them in that fashion and that there was some prior knowledge or association, but we haven’t been able to establish that,” sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Ross Bonfiglio said.

Packer appeared in court Tuesday but did not enter a plea. The public defender’s office is handling his case, but an attorney has not yet been assigned.

Packer remained jailed and is ineligible for bail.

The Husteds, both 42, were robbed and repeatedly stabbed by an intruder in a motorcycle helmet who entered their Faria Beach home last May 20 through an unlocked glass door, sheriff’s investigators said.

Their 9-year-old son saw a man confront his mother in the kitchen and ran to his 11-year-old sister, who was asleep. The children then ran to a neighbor’s home and called 911. They were not hurt and now live with relatives.

The killings occurred in a quiet neighborhood 80 miles up the coast from Los Angeles.

Packer was arrested Sunday after being linked to the attack by DNA evidence collected when he was charged with another robbery at a Santa Barbara gas station in September 2009.

Investigators also were trying to determine if he might have been involved in other robberies.

State records show the former Ventura High School football player held a security guard license that was good until Dec. 31, 2010, according to the Ventura County Star.