Killer, Seized After Standoff, Given Life

A Chula Vista man who took several people hostage at a medical clinic as police were closing in on him was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for murdering his 74-year-old neighbor 10 days before the standoff.

After four days of plea-bargain negotiations, Robert Wayne Jacobsen, 35, pleaded guilty Tuesday to fatally shooting William Warden during a burglary Feb. 18 and was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Jacobsen, an unemployed truck driver, was a longtime friend of Warden’s and apparently knew that he and his wife were home the night of the killing. Jacobsen admitted to investigators that he was searching for jewelry when he broke into the house about 3:30 a.m.

During the attack, Jacobsen fired eight rounds from a .45-caliber handgun, hitting Warden three times in the upper body. Warden was a Navy fighter pilot during World War II who had received numerous commendations.

Superior Court Judge William D. Mudd accepted Jacobsen’s guilty plea to first-degree murder and a related special circumstance allegation of murder during a burglary.

Last week, Mudd refused to accept a series of guilty pleas because he said it would force him to dismiss special circumstance allegations that could lead to the death penalty. Defense attorneys had hoped for a deal that would have allowed Jacobsen to obtain his freedom at some point in the future.

As part of Tuesday’s plea-bargain, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against Jacobsen.

“We went through a lot of soul-searching to seek the death penalty, so we had to go through a lot of soul-searching to go with the life sentence,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Gordon Paul Davis said.

Davis reported that Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller personally authorized the plea-bargain early Tuesday morning.

“We attained our primary objective by this plea, and that is the removal of Robert Wayne Jacobsen from society where he can no longer prey upon his family, his friends or the community in which he lives,” Davis said.

Defense attorney Victor Eriksen said he was satisfied with the plea-bargain.

“If we had gone to trial, this was the best result I could have obtained,” Eriksen said, referring to the special circumstance allegation, which carries a minimum sentence of life without parole.

Jacobsen has previously confessed to holding four people hostage at the ReadiCare medical clinic in Chula Vista 10 days after Warden was murdered. Under the plea-bargain, charges of hostage-taking were dropped.

Police flushed Jacobsen out of the medical clinic by lobbing tear gas canisters into the building 26 hours after the standoff began. He had released the last hostage about two hours earlier.

Only one shot was fired during the siege. Police who came inside the clinic as the standoff began fired one shot, hitting Jacobsen in the right shoulder.

Eriksen also said this week that police refused to allow Jacobsen to talk with a priest during the hostage situation. “He was seeking absolution because he was fully expecting to be dead by the end of the situation,” either by his own hand or after being shot by the police, Eriksen said.

Jacobsen agreed to the guilty plea this week after taking his two young boys into consideration and after beginning to come to grips with his sorrow for the murder, Eriksen said.