Kirkes

Leonard M. Kirkes was indicted for the murder of Margaret Senteney more than eight years after she was killed. A jury found him guilty of murder of the second degree and he has appealed from the judgment entered upon the verdict and from an order denying his motion for a new trial.

In 1942, Margaret, then 20 years of age, was living in Carpenteria. She left her parents shortly after dinner on a Friday evening to go to the home of a woman who lived about one-quarter of a mile away. On the following Sunday morning, her body was found lying beside a little used road some seven miles from Carpenteria. Death had been caused by strangulation and dislocation of vertebrae of the neck. She had not been sexually molested.

At the time of the homicide, Kirkes, a married man living in Carpenteria with his family, was a member of the State Highway Patrol. All of the evidence upon which the jury found him guilty is circumstantial. The most damaging testimony against him is that of Dorothy Egan who said that she saw Margaret enter and ride away in Kirkes’ automobile on the fateful Friday evening. Mrs. Egan told no one of this occurrence until after Kirkes was indicted.

One of the vital…