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Corona, who had been serving a life prison term since his 1973
conviction on 25 counts of first-degree murder, died of natural
causes at an outside hospital, the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.
The number of murders were a U.S. record at the time and
authorities have speculated that additional victims may have
been slain and never discovered or tied to Corona.
Corona, who was born in Mexico, migrated to the United States as
a teenager in the 1950s and suffered a mental breakdown
following deadly floods along the Yuba River in 1955, according
to the San Francisco Chronicle.
He was committed to a California mental institution suffering
from schizophrenia, but returned to agriculture in the Yuba City
area following his release, where he began hiring farmworkers,
the paper reported.
It was those men whom Corona was convicted of targeting, raping
and stabbing, sometimes hacking at their heads with a machete.
In May 1971, a local farm owner found human remains buried in a
peach orchard near the Feather River in Sutter County,
California, leading ultimately to the discovery of two dozen
more bodies.
The murders were linked to Corona through bank slips found with
his name on them and because they had been hired through his
labor contracting business.
Corona was found guilty of the murders in January 1971, but that
conviction was later overturned by an appeals court. He was
convicted again at a second trial in 1982. He was denied parole
eight times and was next eligible in 2021.
In 1973, Corona survived a stabbing by another inmate, losing
the sight in his left eye in the attack, according to the
corrections department.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter
Cooney)
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