Juan Corona: The Machete Murderer of 25 Farmworkers

Juan Corona was a Mexican-born California labor contractor convicted of murdering 25 migrant farmworkers whose bodies were unearthed from shallow graves along the Feather River near Yuba City in the spring of 1971. At the time, it was the deadliest serial murder case in United States history. He was convicted twice, in 1973 and again in 1982 after his first verdict was overturned, and he died in prison in 2019 at age 85.¹

Who Juan Corona Was

Corona was born in 1934 in Autlán, Jalisco, Mexico. He crossed illegally into California at sixteen and picked crops in the Imperial Valley before moving north to the Sacramento Valley.² He later obtained legal residency, married, and had four daughters. By the late 1960s he held a labor contractor’s license and hired migrant workers for fruit and vegetable farmers throughout the region. The job put him in daily contact with transient laborers who moved farm to farm and were rarely missed when they vanished.

His medical history became central to later arguments about his defense. After a Yuba River flood in January 1956, Corona suffered a breakdown and became convinced the people around him were dead and that he was living among ghosts. His half-brother Natividad had him committed to DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, where he was diagnosed with “schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type” and given 23 electroshock treatments without anesthesia over three months before being released and deported.² He later returned to California with a green card.

How the Killings Were Discovered

The case broke on May 19, 1971. A peach farmer in Sutter County who used Corona to supply workers noticed a fresh hole in his orchard, returned the next day to find it filled in, and called the sheriff.³ Deputies dug up the body of Kenneth Whitacre, a 40-year-old homeless man with his head cleaved open and multiple stab wounds.

Four days later, investigators uncovered more graves on the Sullivan Ranch, where Corona housed his workers.³ Over two weeks, authorities recovered 25 bodies from orchards, groves, and river-bottom land near Yuba City and Marysville, spread across Sutter, Yuba, and Tehama counties.⁴ All 25 had been hacked and stabbed; one had also been shot.⁵

The victims were migrant workers and drifters who followed seasonal harvests up and down the valley. They ranged from about 40 to their mid-60s and included two Black men, one Pit River Indian, and 22 white men.⁶ Fourteen of them, including four never identified, are buried together in a common grave in Sutter, west of Yuba City, under a marker reading, “Here lie fourteen men of the sod, four of them known only to God.”⁷

The Evidence Against Him

The case was entirely circumstantial, but the physical evidence was substantial. On May 25, 1971, deputies pulled two meat receipts dated May 21 and signed “Juan V. Corona” from inside a grave. That same night another victim was recovered, and a missing persons report already named Corona as the last person seen with him.⁶ Bank deposit slips bearing Corona’s name and address were found in two other graves.³

Searches of his home and vehicles produced an 18-inch machete, knives, a pistol, a wooden club, and a post-hole digger. Two knives from his office carried human blood and dirt, and a surgeon testified they “could have” caused the victims’ chest wounds.⁶ Human blood covering all four ABO types turned up in the trunk of his car and his van.

The most damaging item was a green ledger from Corona’s bedroom. It contained 34 names and dates; seven of the names matched identified murder victims and sat next to dates near when those men were last seen alive.⁶ Handwriting experts confirmed the entries were in Corona’s hand, written with a distinctive six-color pen.⁸

The investigation had gaps too. Police confused the identities of four corpses, blurring which receipts belonged to which grave. No fingerprints were lifted from the ledger, the pistol, or the personal items on the victims. The actual location where the killings happened was never found.⁶

Arrest and Missing Motive

Sutter County Sheriff Roy Whiteaker ordered Corona arrested early on May 26, 1971, before even half the graves had been opened. Whiteaker said Corona was “noticeably present” near the orchards and “always seemed to be around when we found a grave.”⁴

Prosecutors never proved a motive. They gestured at times toward a sexual “sadist’s lust” tied to homosexuality, but the evidence was thin, and the judge excluded a 1960s overheard conversation offered to suggest Corona was homosexual.⁶ In chambers, prosecutor Bart Williams conceded the state had no proven motive.

The First Conviction

Corona’s first trial took place in Colusa County in 1972 and 1973. The prosecution called 116 witnesses. His attorney, Richard E. Hawk, called no witnesses, barely cross-examined, and delivered a seven-minute closing argument. On January 18, 1973, the jury convicted Corona on all 25 counts of first-degree murder.⁶ He was sentenced to 25 concurrent life terms and sent to state prison on February 17, 1973.¹

Juror Naomi Underwood later said she had voted to convict despite believing Corona was innocent because she thought deliberations could not end without a unanimous verdict.⁶ The presiding judge, Richard Patton, remarked during the trial that “the investigation was inept, the preparation inefficient, and the prosecution inadequate.”

Why the First Verdict Was Overturned

On May 8, 1978, the California Court of Appeal unanimously reversed the conviction in a 71-page opinion and ordered a new trial.⁹ The problem was a conflict of interest built into Corona’s defense. Unable to pay legal fees, he had granted Hawk exclusive literary and dramatic rights to his life story in exchange for representation. Hawk seated a professional writer, Ed Cray, at counsel table during trial, and before the verdict came in, the two had already contracted with Macmillan to publish Burden of Proof, The Case of Juan Corona, which appeared months after the trial ended.⁸

The appeals court found the arrangement gave Hawk a financial reason to prolong the trial rather than pursue defenses that might have shortened it. Hawk never raised mental incompetence, diminished capacity, or legal insanity, despite Corona’s 1956 hospitalization for paranoid schizophrenia, active hallucinations reported by psychiatrists during the trial, and the fact that he was being administered 1,400 milligrams of Thorazine daily in custody.⁸ The court called Hawk’s conduct a “gross neglect of his basic duty” that turned the trial into “a farce and mockery.”

The decision became a frequently cited California precedent on the right to effective assistance of counsel, establishing that an attorney’s acquisition of literary rights to a client’s story in exchange for services creates an inherent conflict that violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The 1982 Retrial

The retrial was held in Hayward, in Alameda County. New attorneys Terence Hallinan and Michael Mendelson pursued the strategy Hawk had never raised, pointing to Corona’s half-brother Natividad, who had suffered his own mental breakdown in 1970 after attacking a man with a machete in his café.² In his opening, Hallinan described the killings as a “maniac rage that was occasional and spasmodic” and named Natividad as the only person fitting that profile.¹⁰

In September 1982, the jury convicted Corona on all 25 counts of murder for the second time.¹¹

Parole Hearings

Corona was denied parole eight times, at hearings in 1984, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2011, and 2016.¹ The board consistently found he posed a threat to public safety.¹²

At the 2011 hearing, Corona gave what prosecutors called his first full admission, telling the panel he killed his first victim with a kitchen knife, his second with a firearm, and the rest with a machete, and characterizing the killings as justified because the victims were “winos” trespassing in orchards.¹³ Sutter County Assistant District Attorney Jana McClung said Corona “seemed to ramble” and “doesn’t seem to realize that what he did was wrong.” At his final hearing in November 2016, Corona reversed course and told the board he did not remember killing anyone. District Attorney Amanda Hopper said that “when it had anything to do with killing the 25 people or his mental state, he conveniently could no longer remember.”¹⁴ He was told he would not be eligible again for five years.

Death

Juan Corona died on March 4, 2019, at 8:15 a.m. at an outside hospital while an inmate at California State Prison in Corcoran. He was 85. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported the cause as natural causes.¹ He had served nearly 46 years of his 25 concurrent life sentences.

1
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Inmate Juan Corona Dies of Natural Causes
2
eScholarship. Juan Vallejo Corona Case Study
3
Los Angeles Times. Juan Corona, Convicted of Killing 25 Farmworkers, Dies at 85
4
Appeal-Democrat. Darkness by the River: The Juan Corona Files
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New York Times. Juan Corona, Convicted of Killing 25 Migrant Workers, Dies at 85
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The Atlantic. The Juan Corona Trial
7
KQED. Juan Corona, Yuba City Serial Killer, Dead at 85
8
Findlaw. People v. Corona
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New York Times. Conviction Reversed in Migrants Murder; New Trial Ordered
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New York Times. Corona’s Brother Blamed in Deaths
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UPI. Jurors Who Convicted Juan Corona of Mass Murder
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CNN. California Man Convicted of 25 Murders Denied Parole
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Santa Cruz Sentinel. Juan Corona Admits Sutter County Mass Murders, Is Denied Parole
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Los Angeles Times. Juan Corona Denied Parole