Hendricks

Appeals were taken by each of the defendants upon the same record from judgments based upon verdicts of a jury finding them guilty of murder in the first degree and fixing the penalty as imprisonment in the penitentiary for life, and from orders denying their motions for a new trial.

It.is contended that the evidence was insufficient to justify the verdicts and judgments, but we are impelled by a careful review of the same to hold this contention untenable and not requiring a detailed recital of the testimony. The body of an unclothed man was discovered by a road foreman in a canyon in Los Angeles County, bearing wounds upon either side of the head, and a necktie tightly drawn about the neck. It lay in a ditch which had been excavated on the preceding day, and was identified as that of a man who had been in company with the defendants at a store and drinking resort for a period of two weeks to and including the day last mentioned, by the name of Robert J. Erwin. At the request of the proprietor that Erwin be taken home and placed in bed the defendants departed with him, an automobile horn was heard, and thereafter the defendants returned to the store without him. He was not again…