Killer says he's served his time

It was an execution-style murder along a country road "in the middle of nowhere" five miles south of Marsyville, law enforcement said — and after more than 25 years in prison, Randall Lee McArthur says it's time he was paroled.

"I was a kid. I was irresponsible," former Marysville resident McArthur, 44, told the state Board of Prison Terms about the 1982 murder of Bradford Lee Howland, 26, of Olivehurst. "I was wild, you know. I was out for myself."

McArthur contends he now poses no threat to the public if released from prison.

But a filing Friday in Yuba County Superior Court by the state Attorney General's Office agrees with the prison board's decision to deny parole for McArthur, sentenced in 1983 to a term of 25 years to life.

He remains a danger to the public because of the nature of the murder along Forty Mile Road — "shooting a helpless, unarmed victim," the state Attorney General's Office said.

McArthur has challenged in Yuba County Superior Court the prison's board decision in 2007 denying him parole, and in December an order by Judge Debra Givens directed state officials to explain why they concluded McArthur should continue to serve his sentence at Folsom State Prison.

The judge had written that she could not tell from the record provided the Yuba County court the reason why the state prison board denied parole.

The state Attorney General's Office response, citing the nature of the murder itself, asks that Yuba County Superior Court turn down McArthur's bid for release. No date is set for a decision by the local court.

At the 2007 state prison board hearing, the Yuba County District Attorney's Office spoke against McArthur's release.

The murder was done for no purpose other than allowing McArthur to "know what it felt like," Deputy District Attorney Melanie Bendorf said.

The prosecutor in the 1982 case, Bendorf recounted, had believed that "of all the individuals he has put away, this inmate is the least likely to successfully parole."

Bendorf said the prosecutor described McArthur as one of the most dangerous individuals the prosecutor had sent to prison.

McArthur said the murder came after the victim was flirting with the girlfriend of a man McArthur knew. On the Saturday night of July 30, 1982, the two men took Howland to Johnson Park School in Olivehurst where they robbed him at gunpoint and then drove to the remote road.

The parole board noted several different versions of how the victim, shot four times, was killed.

"Regardless of the sequence of events," the state panel said, "the bottom line is that Mr. Howland is dead."

After the homicide, McArthur and the second man, later convicted of attempted voluntary manslaughter in connection with Howland's death and sentenced to five years in prison, went joyriding in Howland's 1981 Chevette, driving into fences at Lindhurst High School.

The next day McArthur went with others to the Yuba-Sutter Fair.

A ranch worker discovered Howland's body the weekend of the murder and days later the victim's car was pulled from the Feather River near the New England Orchards in Yuba County.

Inmates at the Yuba County Jail, where McArthur was held on separate burglary charges, said he'd talked about the homicide. Their statements confirmed other accounts law enforcement had received about the crime.

McArthur said he'd smoked marijuana, had four hits of LSD and drank a half-dozen "Salty Dogs" with vodka and grapefruit juice the day of Howland's killing.

He has family in Butte County willing to take him after his release from prison, McArthur noted in the 364-page court filing seeking parole.

His attorney said McArthur is a different person today.

"He's done an awful lot," Mike Gunning said, "to convince you he's changed his life."

"He doesn't think the way an 18-year-old thinks," Gunning told the state board in 2007.

McArthur said he is pursuing a college degree in ancient religions in correspondence courses with the New Mexico Institute of Spiritual Studies and that his own beliefs involve Wicca, an ancient, Pagan-based religion.

A member of the state prison board, noting McArthur's references to Wicca along with Druidism, said some people view them as evil religions. McArthur was asked if he was discovering something different.

McArthur responded in the affirmative, describing Wicca as a nature-based religion closer to Native American culture and traditions.