Devout Christians and young parents, John Rainwater, 25, and wife Lori, 22, were managing a 14-unit lodge in Atascadero when a parolee from the Utah prison system broke into their home.He had been at the door of the Rainwater apartment a few days before pretending to be interested in a rental.
Now it was late on February 4, 1987 and rent money was due to come in. On parole for attempted murder, robbery and kidnapping the convict had been out for two months. Before driving to the lodge on El Camino Real he had bought duct tape at Kmart. He was armed with a .38 caliber pistol and likely had an accomplice.
Over the last hours of their lives the couple were tied up, savagely beaten and raped.Naked, screaming and trailing blood, the Rainwaters somehow escaped into the pre-dawn fog with their infant children just before 6 am.
Both parents were murdered in the motel parking lot.Residents awoke to gunshots, screams and the sound of a truck driving off.
The two children were found alive under their mother’s body.
Dennis Duane Webb, then 35, was arrested for dealing marijuana in Paso Robles within days. Evidence was accumulated linking Webb to the murders including a fingerprint on duct tape at the crime scene.
His former girlfriend and fellow pot dealer Sharon White Bear testified that he had confessed to the murders in conversations taped by investigators.
Dennis Webb did not testify during the first phase of the trial.
Defense attorneys almost always advise their clients not to testify because there is usually little to gain and much to lose.
After he was found guilty Webb stopped listening to advice and started talking.
He telephoned Telegram-Tribune reporter Dan Parker, wrote threatening letters, called prosecutor John Trice a maggot and argued that he wanted to ask for death during the penalty phase of his trial.
Judge Warren Conklin reluctantly granted him this request.
“I do not believe it would be appropriate to deny you the opportunity to testify,” Conklin told Webb.
“However I must advise you, I believe your choice (to request death) is ill-advised.”
In front of the jury that would decide his fate Webb gave a chilling and unrepentant account of his involvement in 5 unsolved murders in addition to the Rainwater killings.
The courtroom was silent on July 15, 1988 as Webb took the stand.
“I am going to assassinate my character,” Webb muttered, addressing the jurors in his deep, flat, unquavering voice.
“The reason why I’m going to do that is (because) you people are going to decide whether my fate…”
“When I get through talking to you people today, you’ll give me that death penalty,” Webb said nodding and smiling.
“I’m not here because my conscience is bothering me,” he said.
“I haven’t got any remorse. I don’t care.
“I’ve lived a culpable past. My rap sheet doesn’t really read that way but this is why my rap sheet doesn’t read that way: dead men tell no tales.”
“I’ve killed several times. I’ve never been busted for it. I beat the system.”But now, “the jig’s up.”
“I have no feelings ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got no heart. My heart is like a block of ice.”
***
“They told me I’d be tried by a jury of my peers,” Webb told them.
“You people aren’t my peers. You people are human beings. I’m a machine. I don’t even care about my own life. I don’t care. I don’t care about life.”
Webb then took off his long sleeved white dress shirt, revealing arms covered with tattoos.
“Show and tell,” Webb said grinning.“You guys know Dennis the Menace, the little cartoon character. Everyone loves Dennis the Menace. Here’s another Dennis the Menace, ladies and gentlemen,” Webb said, pointing at a tattoo.
“He’s holding a money sack in one hand, and in the other is a ball and chain.
“I’m that Dennis the Menace — the only hell my momma ever raised.”
His tattoos included Nazi white supremacist marks and several commemorated murders.
He admitted to stabbing death both a gay man and a black man out of hatred, killed during an interrupted burglary, murdered for hire and acted as a lookout during a fatal prison stabbing.
“Fast women, drugs, booze and dying,” Webb said.
“My downfall. My pleasure.
“What do you do with a rabid dog?” Webb asked the jury, “You put it to sleep, don’t you? I think the people in the state of California are scared to do that. Bleeding hearts.
“Death is the only appropriate sentence for me, Webb concluded, sneering at the jury and shaking his head.
“That’s all I’ve got to say to you people.”
The jury deliberated only 90 minutes before returning the death penalty.
Webb laughed as the verdict was read.
Though Webb would loudly disagree with some of the points made at the trial and hinted he was not alone, he never revealed the name of an accomplice.
Investigators think they know who he was but never had enough evidence to bring a case to trial. The suspect died while a patient at Patton State Hospital.
Family members who protect their privacy raised the children.
Said one relative, “The entire family would like the babies to be raised in a normal, healthy environment.”Over 20 years later, Webb remains in San Quentin on Death Row, one of four San Luis Obispo County convicts there.
John Trice is now a judge.
Reporter Dan Parker wrote the court stories the quotes are from.
Though Robert Dyer was credited, David Middlecamp made the photo.
***
Several reporters and photographers covered the story over the years. I recall shivering in winter fog as reporter Dan Stephens pieced together the initial story interviewing residents at the lodge. Each detail made the day feel colder as the morning’s tragic events began to take shape.
Later when Webb took the stand the different chill filled the courtroom as the mind of a remorseless and calculating killer was revealed.
If any jurors are reading this I offer my thanks for their service in a harrowing trial. I am also grateful for the countless hours the judges, investigators, witnesses and legal teams put in on all sides of the case.
Their efforts gave the community the best opportunity to understand the truth and arrive at a just verdict.
***
The story of the county’s most recent death penalty case, People vs. Rex Krebs can be found here.
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What a horrific crime, committed by a twisted, seemingly unrepentant man.
Boy, I sure hated those months of the murder, manhunt, and trial. What a horrific tragedy for us all.
Shame, that the people that think this dog can be tamed have spared his life for so long….while the good, honest, innocent people he killed lay in the ground, their family destroyed.
Drag him out and hang him (saves on electricity).
An indication of how long ago the conviction was, they were sending the condemned to the gas chamber when Webb was sentenced to death.
While it might take along time for death row inmates to get executed, think about spending 20 years alongside guys like Dennis Webb.
I was the reporter who wrote those stories about Webb’s sentencing 21 years ago. I’ll never forget sitting in that courtroom and hearing him speak on the witness stand. It was really horrifying.
Just wondering if you knew what happend to the children? Are they still local? What family did the end up with?
The family requested that the children be allowed to grow up outside the glare of this horrific event. The newspaper has honored this request.
some people were just born to kill……….and that man is one of them……i feel sorry for the victims….ant their familys…..
I will never forget that day. I was there. It is forever etched in my mind. Every so often I check the deathrow regestry and my heart skips a beat when I see that killers name. Why is this sentence not carried out? My thoughts and prayers are with the kids and family and I still cry after all these years at the tragedy and lives shattered by one man who evades justice still. It makes me sick.
Eventhough all of you have your right to your opinions, I have been on both sides of death. Until you face both sides, you never seem to grip this is someones child, someones brother, someone uncle, someone’s father. There by the grace of God go I. We never know what is going to happen in our own back yard.
Like Mr. Webb said at his hearing- you put rabid dogs to death. This person was on the witness stand and admitted to killing the Rainwaters, and even others, in the commission of other crimes. He destroyed the lives of countless people…it doesn’t matter that he is someone’s relative. California has over 600 inmates on death row, where Connecticut only has 3. There is no dis-incentive for heinous crimes in California.
Sorry-Connecticut has 8 on death row, it is Colorado that has only 3.
Do you realize that some inmates receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care while they are incarcerated, while our elderly who worked and contributed to society their entire lives receive sub-standard care? What is wrong with our system? When will the madness stop?????
everyone has the wrong idea about killers, you have to get into the psychy and it never has anything to do with their childhood,some people are just violent and when they get mad it turns out the kill then it becomes the thrill. stop judging when we can’t really say what was going on in his head at those exact moments.
So he has relatives and family. So what? So did John and Lori. I saw the end result of what he did. As far as what was going through his mind when he committed this act, I could care less. Some of the garbage I hear in defence of “poor, misguided souls” like him makes me sick. But that’s the way it is here in sunny California. Here, you get the death sentence, you die—OF OLD AGE!!!!
i was married to dennis in salt lake city utah and they flew me and my brother to cal for his penalty phase and when he called from jail he told me he didnt do it and after what he did ti me i knew he did it .when his brother called me and asked me if knew of a hit man .dennis may have turned out dfferent if he didnt spend so many of his years in prison connie webb tanner salt lake city utah
I didn’t know dennis had a wife named connie?
I was an alternate juror on the trial. It was horrific to see all of the death scene photos and to hear all of the gruesome details. We found him guilty and sentenced him to death.
Have they carried out the execution yet? I certainly hope so. He deserves to die in agony like his victims.
Randy V.