Man who killed Modesto couple enters plea. Conviction overturned for man accused of hiring him
The man who killed and then burned the bodies of a couple inside their Modesto home in 2013 took a plea agreement last week. The couple’s son, suspected of hiring the killer, is preparing for his second trial after his murder convictions were overturned on appeal.
On Wednesday, Felix Valverde III, 35, pleaded no contest to the first-degree murders of Scott and Janet Pettit, as well as arson. He is scheduled to be sentenced in May to 33 years to life in prison.
Valverde previously faced multiple special circumstances, including committing the murders for financial gain, that, if found to be true, could have resulted in a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. His attorney Robert Chase said the special circumstances were dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Valverde was on track to going to trial in 2020 along with co-defendant Brandon Pettit but was declared incompetent to stand trial. After treatment at a state hospital, Valverde was found competent last summer.
Pettit, 35, did go to trial in 2020 and was convicted by a jury of two counts of first-degree murder for financial gain. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But in October, the California Court of Appeals, Fifth District, overturned his conviction because during a 90-minute interrogation, Modesto police detectives obtained statements from him in violation of his Miranda rights.
The court said in its opinion published Oct. 19 that a Modesto police detective used interview techniques that contributed to a “psychologically coercive environment.”
Scott and Janet Pettit were shot in their bedroom in their north Modesto home the morning of Aug. 8, 2013. The room was then set on fire.
The Pettits were a well-respected couple in the community. Janet Pettit was a neonatal nurse practitioner and clinical nurse at Doctors Medical Center and Scott owned a martial arts school in Riverbank.
In the case against Pettit, based entirely on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution alleged he stood to inherit his parents’ home and several rental properties, seven expensive cars and $1 million for his half of life insurance policies on his parents. Witnesses testified that Pettit talked about owning some of the vehicles both leading up to and in the wake of his parents’ deaths. He also talked to several people about buying a $1.3 million property in Georgia and, on the night of his parents’ deaths, told a woman he would buy her breast implants.
Evidence presented at Pettit’s trial included witness testimony that he said on multiple occasions he wanted his parents dead, that he gave Valverde bullets and money, and that he had a phone conversation with Valverde the night of the murders.
During a search of Valverde’s apartment, detectives found a gas can containing gasoline, Janet and Scott Pettit’s wallets and two keys to their home. They also found seven .22 caliber shell casings in bushes at the complex where a neighbor testified he’d seen Valverde digging. The Pettits were shot seven times: Janet twice and Scott five times.
The prosecution alleged Brandon Pettit gave Valverde the keys to the home, while the defense argued that Valverde easily could have entered the home through a large dog door and taken the keys with him when he left.
The defense said Pettit’s words and actions were not indicative of his guilt but the result of his developmental disorders, including Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. This caused him to say things and behave in a manner counter to social norms and manifest grief differently than most, according to witnesses. He argued that Valverde acted alone the night of the murders while Pettit was working a graveyard shift as a security guard in another city.
Brandon Pettit’s sister and aunt testified for the defense, and the defendant always has maintained his innocence, even through a 90-minute interrogation by Modesto police Detective Mike Hicks on Aug. 17, 2013, a week after the Pettits were killed.
Law enforcement must read a person his or her Miranda rights — the right against self-incrimination and to an attorney — if that person is in custody and being asked incriminating questions.
Hicks, now a sergeant, started the interview by telling Pettit he was not under arrest and free to leave at any time. He left the door to the interview room open.
But the court concluded that what followed would lead a reasonable person in Pettit’s position to conclude he was not in fact free to leave, therefore making the interrogation custodial.
Hicks used “exclusively accusatory” questioning, made personal attacks on Pettit and tried to elicit a confession by leading him to believe it would help his sister get insurance money, according to the appellate court.
Hicks told Pettit he was not “buying” the “whole Asperger’s thing” and called him a “fake” with regard to many aspects of his life, according to the opinion.
“The interview lasted one and a half hours with Hicks controlling the interview the majority of the time, and at one point, laying out his case against (Pettit) and repeatedly keeping (Pettit) from interrupting him,” the court said in its opinion, “Further contributing to the oppressive atmosphere were other techniques employed by Hicks, including offering several reasons for why appellant committed the murders, rather than asking questions about whether he had involvement.”
Hicks, who did not respond to a request from The Bee for comment, repeatedly told Pettit he was lying about things like where Valverde got his parents’ house keys and his explanation that Valverde had threatened his family and wanted to extort money from them, which Pettit had not initially told police.
“Hicks’s interrogation techniques worked to communicate to a reasonable person in (Pettit’s) position that the interrogation would not be over until he made statements congruent with Hicks’s theory of the case,” the opinion reads. “We conclude based on all the relevant factors, particularly the nature of the questioning, a reasonable person in (Pettit’s) position would not have felt free to terminate the interview and leave.”
The case was remanded to Stanislaus Superior Court and Pettit was transferred from prison back to the Stanislaus County jail in January.
Chief Deputy Public Defender Reed Wagner said the case essentially goes back to its “pretrial posture,” as if the trial and conviction never happened.
But this time, if the case goes to trial again, any statements taken in violation of Pettit’s Miranda rights will be inadmissible.
That includes Pettit’s admission that he gave Valverde money and bullets, conflicting statements about his friendship with Valverde, and his new claim, made more than week after his parents’ death, that Valverde was trying to extort money from his family.
The court found that admission of Pettit’s statements in his 2020 trial “was not harmless.”
“(Pettit’s) defense was that Valverde committed the murders alone and he was not involved, and it would not have been unreasonable for the jury to consider this defense,” according to the appellate court. “Statements (Pettit) made during the August 17 interview, while not direct confessions to the crimes, undermined his defense and strengthened the link the prosecution needed to make between (Pettit) and Valverde.”
District attorney Jeff Laugero said Thursday that his office plans to retry the case. He said that even without Pettit’s statements from the Aug. 17 interview, “we believe there is sufficient evidence to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
