Irvine woman gets 25 to life for killing mother in Huntington Beach

A 70-year-old woman was sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in prison for killing her 92-year-old mother in Huntington Beach.

Cynthia Roberta Strange was convicted in June of first-degree murder for killing her mother, Ruth Strange, on Sept. 4, 2018, at 6812 Vista Del Sol Drive. But jurors rejected a special circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Lewis Clapp rejected motions from Strange’s attorney, Sara Ross of the Orange County public defender’s office, to reduce the conviction to voluntary manslaughter and to place her on probation due to her health issues and age.

The discussion of the motion to reduce charges led Clapp to also consider whether it was a second-degree murder, which would have netted a 15-to-life sentence.

Clapp earlier rejected Ross’ motion for a new trial, which was based on allegations of issues with jurors. Three jurors have said they now question the verdict, attorneys argued.

In court papers, Ross said her client, who depends on a wheelchair, “has a number of medical problems, including a lack of mobility, decreased use of her left shoulder and right arm, asthma, chronic arthritis, sinus issues, problems with her kidneys, neuropathy, osteoarthritis in both ankles and both feet, surgery for salivary gland cancer, and a nasal septal perforation in
2017. Moreover, she suffers from significant mental health issues.”

Clapp noted during the hearing that Strange had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2009.

The victim sustained stab wounds to the head, but the cause of death was drowning in her swimming pool, so the question was raised during the hearing how Strange could have maneuvered her mother into the water.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Nick Thomo argued there was evidence of premeditation and deliberation to meet the burden for a first-degree murder. He pointed to web searches, multiple visits to her mother’s house the night of the killing and her apparent purchase of gloves at a drugstore 30 minutes from her residence.

“This is someone who carefully planned out this murder,” Thomo said. “This is someone who is angry, jealous and motivated by money,” he argued.

Cynthia Strange, then 64, is seen in a photo released by Huntington Beach police on Oct. 2, 2018.

(Huntington Beach Police Department)

When Clapp asked why there wasn’t more of a blood trail to the pool, Thomo speculated the victim could have bled out and the blood was clotting by the time she was walked over to the pool with the help of a walker.

“She doesn’t have to pick her up like the Hulk,” Thomo said.

The victim’s other daughter, Amy Hamilton, arrived to pick up her mother for a doctor’s appointment about 10 a.m. the day the victim was killed, Thomo said in his opening statement of the trial. She saw a small garage door open and an inner door leading to the house was locked, which she thought was suspicious.

Hamilton called police for a welfare check when her mother did not answer her phone calls.

Officers asked her to stay back while they searched the house, and they found a bathroom “covered in blood” and bloody footprints leading to a blood-spattered recliner before a sliding-glass door to the outside patio, Thomo said. When they checked the backyard, they found the victim in the swimming pool. The cuts and lacerations to the victim’s head were deemed “superficial,” and her death was caused by drowning.

Thomo said Strange killed her mother to inherit money and to avoid repaying a debt.

In court papers, Thomo said Strange was receiving supplemental income from her mother after she told her she had gotten divorced. But she actually never got divorced and continued receiving benefits from the U.S. Navy service member while also earning a profit from selling her Oceanside home and moving to Irvine, which angered her mother.

On Sept. 3, 2018, Strange went to her mother’s house about midnight, prompting her mother to repeatedly try to call Hamilton, leaving voicemail messages begging for help and a call back, Thomo said. “You have to help me, I’m afraid,” the victim told Hamilton in a voicemail played for jurors.

Eventually, Ruth Strange let Cynthia in before Hamilton called her back and threatened to call police, so the defendant left, Thomo said.

The day before her mother was killed, Cynthia Strange made several voice requests of Google and searched the web for information on topics such as the difference between bruises from a fall and a punch. She sought to find out from the web the average age of a woman’s death in the U.S., about smothering, how air in a needle can kill someone and how to break someone’s neck, Thomo said.

Police made their case against Strange with surveillance video and cellphone tracking, Thomo said.

On the day of the killing, the defendant’s cellphone did not show any movement from her Irvine residence, prompting detectives to think she left it there because surveillance video shows her about 5:32 a.m. at a Walgreens at 19581 Beach Blvd., where she bought blue latex gloves, Thomo said.

“She went right back to the victim’s house,” when the victim would be typically getting up to grab her morning newspaper, Thomo said.

The defendant is seen on doorbell videos driving in the neighborhood with the headlights off, Thomo said. Then the car isn’t seen again until about 8 a.m., leaving the area.

Strange was seen at her bank at 10 a.m. wearing different clothes than what she was seen wearing at the Walgreens, Thomo said. “After the murder, she changed her clothes.”

When Strange went to meet with police for questioning, she wore a sling even though a doctor had told her it was no longer necessary, he said.

Ross said Cynthia Strange was a geologist, active in her senior community where she was known as being “kind”and “gentle.” She said Strange had a full shoulder replacement surgery shortly before the killing and suffered from arthritis in her right wrist.

However, Ross said her client’s sister, Hamilton, had “two million reasons to want her mother dead,” referring to the money she expected to inherit. Hamilton “hates working to an extreme,” so she relied heavily on her mother for income, Ross said. “She was in significant debt, way over her head.”

The attorney also described Hamilton as “abusive, aggressive, hostile, lazy and money-hungry.”

Prior to 2016, the two sisters got along fine, but that changed in April of that year when Cynthia Strange moved from Oceanside to Irvine to be closer to her mother, Ross said. In December of that year, Hamilton got her mother to buy a condo for her, but despite the monthly income and no house payment, her daughter continued racking up debt, Ross said.

“She’s in so much debt, she starts cashing out stock her mother gave her a year before,” Ross said.

When Ruth Strange got sick, Hamilton convinced her mother that Cynthia got her ill, Ross said. That’s when she got her mother to change the family trust that was set up in by their parents in 1992, Ross alleged.

The house in Huntington Beach was to be split by the three daughters — the oldest daughter is living in Massachusetts — and the rest of the estate to be divided by the four siblings (a brother resides in Minnesota), Ross said. But Hamilton convinced her mother to list Hamilton as the beneficiary of a stocks account worth about $1.66 million, Ross said. When adding in $100,000 from an IRA and money from the sale of the house, the total inheritance would be $2 million for Hamilton.

Cynthia Strange showed up at her mother’s house about midnight Sept. 3 because she had an unpleasant encounter with a “creep,” her attorney said.

Ross said that it was Hamilton who acted suspiciously the day of the killing, not calling 911 but the non-emergency line instead when she arrived to pick up the victim, who did not answer the phone. “That’s what you do when you’re scared? You call the non-emergency line, not 911,’’ she wondered aloud.

When officers told Hamilton her mother was found in the pool, Hamilton asked, “Was she stabbed?” according to Ross.

“They only knew she was stabbed after the autopsy, but she knew right away,” Ross said.

Ross also said police “failed” to adequately investigate Hamilton, who had a box of latex gloves in her car that were never tested.