Assemblyman Luis A. Alejo (D-Salinas) has sent a letter to the California Board of Parole Hearings urging it deny parole for Gustavo Marlow, who raped and murdered two young women in Hollister in the late 1980s.
After being convicted and sentenced for one of his Hollister crimes and while awaiting trial for the other, Marlow escaped from prison and raped another woman in Stockton, Alejo’s office noted in a press release. Marlow is serving a 66-years-to-life sentence at a state prison in Jamestown for his convictions.
“Gustavo Marlow must never ever be released from prison,” said Alejo, whose district includes San Benito County. “He has committed some of the most heinous violent crimes imaginable, and he is a proven repeat offender. We cannot ever allow this man to be free to prey on women again. To do so would be an egregious betrayal of women who put their faith in the criminal justice system to protect them from predators like Marlow. And it would be an extreme injustice to the families of the two women he murdered and to his surviving victim and her family.”
Marlow raped and murdered 21-year-old Martha De La Rosa and 16-year-old Lisa Koehler in Hollister in 1988 while he was a juvenile. A new state law, Senate Bill 260, which took effect in 2014, allows inmates who are serving long sentences for crimes committed as juveniles to be considered for parole earlier than adult offenders. The new law also allows the Board of Parole Hearings to consider a juvenile offender’s growth and maturity in prison when considering parole for inmates eligible under SB 260. Alejo’s office noted that he did not support the bill.
“Although I did not support AB 260, I still do not believe the intent and spirit of SB 260 was to put violent and disturbed offenders back on the streets,” Alejo wrote in his letter to the Board of Parole Hearings. “Marlow’s particularly obsessive personality was described in the evidence against him and detailed how he lingered around the places in Hollister where he targeted victims. He continues to pose a danger to our local communities and the people of California. The victims’ families, the surviving rape victim, and the communities of Hollister and Stockton have been through enough. For the sake of the victims’ families, and public safety, I strongly urge you to deny Marlow’s request for parole so he may spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
The Board of Parole Hearings is scheduled to consider Marlow’s case on April 7 at the Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown, where he is incarcerated.