Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Calambro’s last words: ‘I regret it’

CARSON CITY -- It took just two minutes for Alvaro Calambro to die.

Strapped to a gurney inside the old gas chamber at the Nevada State Prison, the 25-year-old man never flinched or struggled as a lethal injection began to course through his veins a few minutes after 9 p.m. Monday.

Family members of the two people whose skulls he bludgeoned in 1994 watched intently through the circular chamber's glass windows, holding each other's hands, yet Calambro's few glances never met their eyes. Instead, the black-haired man turned his head over his left shoulder to the wall and appeared to drift off to sleep.

The execution -- the eighth since Nevada reinstated the death penalty in the 1970s -- was officially over at 9:06 p.m. It marked the end to one of the state's most horrific crimes, committed by a man who repeatedly asked in subsequent years to be put to death despite efforts by lawyers, his mother and the Philippine government to keep him alive.

"I regret it" were Calambro's last words. They were spoken to Bob Bayer, director of prisons, who was the last person to exit the chamber as the chemicals began to flow into Calambro's arms. Bayer said Calambro had made small talk with him earlier in the evening and appeared fully aware of what was going on at the time the needles were positioned.

"He was obviously nervous, but there were no tears in his eyes. He was unfaltering up to the last minute," Bayer said. "I asked him, 'Are you ready?' He said nothing and just nodded."

Bayer said Calambro had spoken with legal counsel for the last time Monday. Glen Wharton, prison spokesman, said Calambro spent hours on the phone talking to relatives earlier in the day but had no visitors.

"I thank him for standing up and taking responsibility for what he did," George Christopher, a brother of one of the victims, said outside the prison gate after witnessing the execution. "At least he was man enough to accept his punishment."

Christopher withstood the falling snow and subfreezing temperature for more than 10 minutes to answer reporters' questions, supported by a cane and dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved white T-shirt upon which he had printed a photo of his late brother, Keith Christopher, 21, and the words "Remember Me."

The bodies of Keith Christopher and Peggy Crawford, 37, were found by a manager, face down and hog-tied, behind the counter of a U-Haul rental center on South Virginia Street a few miles south of downtown Reno. Christopher's head had been bludgeoned 17 times with a ball-peen hammer; Crawford was found with a crowbar rammed through the back of her skull.

The motive for the crime was money, Calambro later confessed to police.

He and his brother-in-law, Duc Huynh, then 38, got away with about $2,400 from the U-Haul till and safe in what amounted to the beginning of a two-state crime spree spanning two weeks. The spree included robbing a San Jose, Calif., bank and a Reno gun shop, carjacking a newspaper delivery man, a high-speed pursuit from central California to Los Angeles and a nine-hour standoff with a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team after which Duc and Calambro surrendered.

Suicide Pact

A week after the arrests, Duc and Calambro's sister, Maria, made a suicide pact.

On Jan. 25, 1994, Maria gave their 4-year-old son, Bihn, 20 sleeping pills, slit his right wrist and suffocated him, then took the blade to her own wrist and swallowed 40 sleeping pills. The woman recovered and is serving a life sentence for her son's murder in the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas.

Duc unsuccessfully tried to slit his wrists while in custody in Los Angeles the same day his son died and eventually hanged himself Dec. 26, 1995, with a bed sheet inside his Ely prison cell.

In addition to the murders and mutilations of Christopher and Crawford for which they were given the death penalty, Calambro and Duc were convicted of 29 violent crimes in California. "The law worked in our favor," Clarence Crawford, father of the slain woman, said. "It won't bring closure, though. Closure means everything is back to normal. We can never get Peggy back, but the person who killed our daughter is dead."

The Crawford and Christopher families never heard from Calambro or his family during the past five years, nor even had a look or nod in their direction during the many court dates they've attended together.

"There has been a certain amount of vindictiveness on our part, but it has not been our intent to get anyone killed," Crawford said. "That was a decision the court made. We are a country of laws, and if we don't enforce the laws, the country will go down the tubes."

Calambro was transferred a few weeks ago from Ely's prison to the Carson City facility, about a mile and a half east of the state Capitol. Its stark gray watchtower, aged brick walls and metal fencing topped with cyclone wire disrupt an otherwise pastoral stretch of farmland where lambs and cows graze.

Calambro was moved from the isolation cell he'd been assigned to the "last night" cell behind the death chamber Monday morning.

Steak for last meal

He ate the same lunch as the 872 inmates in the prison's general population, then at 6 p.m. had steak, rice, corn, apple pie and Sprite for his last meal. Although he was given the chance to choose, the menu selection is limited to foods available in the prison kitchen.

Guards monitored Calambro all day. He was reported to have watched TV, taken communion and talked to one of his sisters. Calambro was also given new prison-issue denims and white laceless tennis shoes in which he walked the 20 steps from his cell to the pale yellow airtight execution chamber. There, four guards strapped him to the gurney with seven seat belts and cuffs to hold in place his ankles and wrists.

The lethal dose of chemicals -- the contents of which authorities refuse to disclose -- was not administered until 9:04 p.m. The delay, Bayer said, was caused by a malfunctioning heart monitor, prompting the medical team to rely on the "old-fashioned method" of a stethoscope to ensure his heart had stopped before pronouncing the man dead.

Among more than two dozen people in attendance were prosecuting attorney David Stanton; Calambro's public defender Michael Pescetta; Christopher and a family friend; Peggy Crawford's father, mother Betty, sister Carol and brother-in law; 11 members of the media; five prison officials; and a delegate of the Philippines. Calambro's family did not attend.

Hours before the execution, Gov. Kenny Guinn reviewed with his legal adviser, Scott Scherer, the last appeal to spare Calambro's life, made on the young man's behalf by officials of his native Philippines.

The request, which Guinn ultimately rejected, contended that Nevada authorities broke international law when the state failed to notify the Philippine consulate of Calambro's arrest in 1994. Benjamin Domingo, Philippines undersecretary for foreign affairs, submitted the appeal by fax on Saturday to the nine-member State Board of Pardons, which includes the governor, attorney general and seven Supreme Court justices.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa noted that the Philippine government has been involved in the case since 1995 and officials testified at the 1996 penalty phase of Calambro's trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal by Lydia Calambro to commute her son's execution.

Guinn 'will never forget'

"This has been the most solemn duty I will face as governor of Nevada and has been an ordeal that I will never forget," Guinn wrote. "But I will also never forget the brutal, gruesome murders that took two innocent people and will forever leave behind sorrow and pain for the families whose lives were impacted by this horrible act. My heart and my prayers go out to all of them."

Stanton, who prosecuted Duc, Calambro and Calambro's sister Maria, said he found it unusual that the Philippines got involved with the case. Even though Calambro was not a naturalized U.S. citizen, he had been living on American soil for 11 years before committing the U-Haul slayings. He had assimilated into the American culture, attended school and held down jobs including a position at the Circus Circus hotel-casino in Reno, Stanton said.

"He wasn't just here on vacation, visiting Yosemite," Stanton said. "The attempts to stop the execution have been made by people who do not like executions. It has had nothing to do with (Calambro) and (the attempts) have been an abuse of the law."

Stanton on Monday shared with the media his case file on the U-Haul slayings, including graphic photos of the bloody crime scene, audiotapes of the nine-hour standoff with police in Los Angeles and Calambro's videotaped confession to police in which he vividly described killing Christopher and Crawford.

Stanton's objective, he said, was to put an end to the tales perpetuated both by Calambro's public defender, Pescetta, and skewed media accounts that falsely portrayed Calambro as mentally incompetent and fantasizing about being a vampire.

In the videotape, Calambro explained that he belonged to a Filipino gang in Delano, Calif., known as S.I.G. He was initiated into the gang in 1993, he said, by having his left hand burned with a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, then cutting a cross into the wound. The gang made its money, he said, by selling drugs and its members would drink droplets of each other's blood -- something Calambro claimed he wanted no part of.

Plan to 'get rich fast'

Calambro said the U-Haul robbery happened because Duc "wanted to get rich fast." Duc had been fired from the U-Haul business several weeks before the murders and knew money would be there.

Crawford and Christopher had volunteered to close the U-Haul center the night of Jan. 3, 1994, when their manager was called away.

Crawford had been living in Reno only a few months, having moved at her parents' insistence from a gang-infested neighborhood in Buena Park, Calif., to start a new life after a difficult divorce, her father said. U-Haul had transferred Christopher to the Virginia Street location 10 days before.

The employees started closing the business at 7 p.m., locking the gates and checking the gas pumps. They had walked back inside the building when Calambro, aiming a shotgun, and Duc, with a handgun, came up behind them. Calambro said Duc yelled for them to get on the ground behind the counter and then told Christopher to get cash out of a back office safe. Calambro admitted taking the money, tying the employees side by side with company twine taken off a sale rack and then taking a hammer first to Christopher's skull and killing him before attacking Crawford.

Stanton said an autopsy revealed that Christopher died struggling. Crawford, however, didn't struggle.

"She was like a doe caught in the headlights," Stanton said. "Her head was buried in a rubber mat, her mouth was taped and she was screaming. Her head was splattered with Christopher's blood, brain and skull. She was terrified. The mental torture he put her through lasted between two and five minutes. She lay there waiting, knowing what was going to happen to her."

Calambro said on the tape that Crawford was praying.

"I said, 'That's good because you are going to go to God,' " Calambro said, describing how he tried twice with one hand to put the crowbar through her head, then swung with both hands over his head.

"Wherever I go, I have to kill," Calambro said. "That's the way I am. ... I am nice and once I get what I want, I kill."

Calambro told police that he had killed people previously in Delano and Lancaster but refused to give details. Reno and Delano police were never able to connect Calambro to any unsolved homicides. Calambro would not tell police about Duc's involvement, saying only that he laughed when Duc threw up after Calambro told him how he killed Crawford and Christopher.

'Anticlimactic' ending

"A lot of victims' families are disappointed by the results," Stanton said. "Their loved ones didn't get a last meal or the chance to say goodbye. In the short term, the execution is anticlimactic. In the long term there is some peace because all that could be done was done. I believe in the death penalty if only because it is just."

Stanton said the appeals are a typical part of the process, but he has noticed over the years that defense attorneys seem to get caught up in the morality of the death penalty and not the facts, such as in this case that Calambro asked to die.

Crawford said the past five years have been miserable for his family since the morning of Jan. 4, 1994, when he and his wife, Betty, were having a late breakfast and heard the news that two people had been found dead inside the U-Haul center.

Crawford and his wife were on a break from their concessionaire jobs at Yellowstone National Park and had driven to Reno to spend the holidays with Peggy and their older daughter, Carol.

"Every year during the holidays, we go in the department stores, we hear the music, it all comes back. We saw her for the last time the day she died. She'd come over for lunch. She was smiling and so happy. Hopefully one day we will see her again.

"Every time there has been an appeal, some group has come out of the woodwork to say, 'Poor Calambro -- oh, we must help this poor soul who can't defend himself,' " Clarence Crawford said. "My God, where was the help for the people he killed?"

Vigil of protest

Almost three dozen protesters of the death penalty attended a vigil Monday evening at St. Teresa of Avila church in Carson City before heading out to the prison gates, where they held candles and placards in the snow and quietly sang hymns.

Natalia Wunderlich of Minden said she was protesting because killing is not the answer.

"We're committing the same kind of crime by killing him, so who will punish us?" Wunderlich said. "We pray for the end of the death penalty. It is worse to make someone stay in prison for the rest of their life."

Other demonstrators, however, held a different view.

"They say he has a low IQ, but where was his IQ the night he planned to go in and rob the place?" asked Patty Pruett, standing outside the prison gates in front of her older white van. On her windshield she had placed a cardboard sign reading: "Let Him Die."

A resident of Carson City for 21 years, Pruett said she was outraged by the U-Haul killings and felt Calambro should have been put to death immediately.

"I would rather have seen him hung in the town square for what he did," Pruett said. "He took it upon himself to rob the place and then bludgeon those people to death. Bludgeoning takes a long time. He didn't even have the guts to shoot them and let them die quickly."

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