A third of a century after Ernest "Kentucky" Pendergrass left Sonoma County's mouth agape by killing his ex-girlfriend with a shotgun, the former hard-drinking trucker and civic notable hopes to leave prison alive.
On Tuesday, the state Board of Parole Hearings will consider whether Pendergrass is sufficiently ill and enfeebled to justify his early release from the California Medical Facility, the sprawling hospital prison in Vacaville.
Pendergrass was 58 when he killed Rosemary Edmonds and caused the death of her husband, Rick. On Saturday, the inmate turned 90.
If the parole board in Sacramento finds he is eligible for what's commonly called a compassionate release, the panel will recommend his prison sentence be recalled by the Sacramento County court that 30 years ago convicted him of the two slayings and sentenced him to 54 years to life.
Should the Sacramento judge decide the long-ailing Pendergrass is not terminally ill or medically incapacitated and therefore not eligible for release, he won't be up for parole until 2018 - the year he would turn 95.
But if Pendergrass is freed, the rough-hewn Pearl Harbor veteran and former outdoorsman, tavern regular and member of the county fair board and grand jury will come back to Sonoma County and live in his daughter's hillside house in Santa Rosa.
"He's tired. He's worn out. He has a few months left," daughter Donna McClelland said. "I would love to have him home. He's got great-grandchildren he's never met."
Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said that if the parole board decides Tuesday that Pendergrass is suitable for release, she will request his prison medical records and then take a position on his possible release. Her review of the records will seek to ascertain if he is so diminished by illness and age that he poses no threat to others.
"There are people of advanced years who have committed violent crimes," Ravitch said. When Pendergrass, who has been treated in prison for a host of potentially fatal maladies, applied last year for clemency, Ravitch urged against it.
In the Sonoma County of three decades ago, Pendergrass was a big man about town and a widely liked one. So the tragic turn of events that he set into motion while full of booze on the night after Thanksgiving in 1981 struck the county like a temblor.
Pendergrass had a shotgun in his pickup when he drove from Santa Rosa to the home on Thorn Road, southwest of Sebastopol, of the newly reunited Rick and Rosemary Edmonds, both 35.
During a marital break-up, Rosemary Edmonds had become romantically involved with Pendergrass, who at the time was estranged from his late wife, Jean. Edmonds and Pendergrass were together only about four months, a period he recounted as the "happiest time of my life."
Upon their split in October 1981, Edmonds returned to her husband. In response to what she said were threats from Pendergrass, she obtained a court order that required him to stay away from her.
As Pendergrass' pickup approached the Edmondses' Tudor-style country home at about 8 p.m. on Nov. 27, the couple was eating dinner at the kitchen table with friend William Day, then 31.
Pendergrass stepped up to the house and fired a 12-gauge shotgun into the kitchen window. The blast struck the chest of the woman who'd been his lover just three weeks earlier, killing her.
Rosemary Edmonds' horrified husband and slightly wounded friend, Day, pushed away from the table and ran to grab guns. Moments later, Day leveled a rifle at a male figure inside the house, and fired.
He'd shot Rick Edmonds. Day then made a frantic call to the sheriff's office. He told the dispatcher, "Kentucky Pendergrass is outside, He just killed Rosemary Edmonds. I've been shot, so has Rick."
As a vehicle headed away from the house, Day ran outside and fired several shots at it.
When a deputy sheriff pulled over a bullet-pierced pickup near Cotati a short while later, driver Pendergrass smelled of alcohol and bled from a minor wound to his hip. He was jailed and a short time later charged with the murders of Rosemary and Rick Edmonds.
Though he didn't deny going to the couple's place and firing a shotgun, he claimed from early on that he was lured to the house by the Edmondses. He said that as he approached the house he thought he heard a shot so he reflexively fired the shotgun, from his hip.
"Boy, did I get sucked in," he told a sheriff's captain as he was being booked into the county jail later the night of the killings. He added, "I can go to bed tonight knowing I did nothing wrong."
His trial was moved to Sacramento after a judge found that because he was so well known and the tragedy had attracted so much media attention, he probably could not get a fair trial in Sonoma County.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: