Ronald J. Ward, 42, was already serving two consecutive life sentences at Montana State Prison for murders in Montana and Arkansas. All four victims died in a four-month period.
In Hamilton, the case against Ward began after Craig Petrich, 43, disappeared from the Black Rabbit RV Park in October 2000 after selling his motor home.
Witnesses testified that Ward borrowed a single-shot rifle on the day after Petrich was last seen alive.
The Ravalli County Sheriff's office tracked the rifle to a pawn shop in Billings and matched shell casings with those found at the scene of the murder.
Ward was picked up on a nationwide warrant issued by the sheriff's office in California just hours after the last murder, said Ravalli County Detective Sgt. Dave Potter.
“He was arrested on our warrant,” Potter said. “They were interested in him but didn't have enough to hold him.”
Ward pleaded guilty to the Hamilton murder in 2001.
“The sheriff's department did a really outstanding job on the initial investigation in this case,” said Ravalli County Attorney George Corn. “Their warrant was used to get a very dangerous man off the streets before he could kill again Š Ward was a brutal, callous and hardened character.”
The son of a prostitute and father of six, Ward was also tied to a high-profile murder case of a young woman in Arkansas killed at a rest stop in August 2000.
Ward pleaded guilty to the murder of Kristin Laurite, 25, of Scotch Plains, N.J., after a DNA match tied him to the crime. He was given a life sentence to run consecutive to his Montana sentence.
Laurite was traveling west to a new job in California with her two dogs when she stopped in a rest area in Morrilton, Ark., just off Interstate 40. Her nude body was found the next day near a dirty pond 300 yards behind the rest stop. She had been stabbed 10 times in the neck.
Her murder was front-page news in Arkansas where billboards with her photo were posted on the interstate asking, “Do You Know Who Killed Me?”
DNA evidence left at the scene of the two women murdered in California led officials to Ward.
Last October, two California prosecutors - Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager and Merced County District Attorney Larry Morse II - met with Ward in an effort to persuade him to plead guilty to the murders.
“We knew that Ward was responsible for both murders and hoped there might be some shred of conscience left in him that we could appeal to and spare the families of Jackie and Shela the heartache of long, protracted jury trials,” Fladager said Tuesday.
Fladager was a member of the trial team that convicted Scott Peterson for the high-profile murders of his pregnant wife, Laci, and unborn son, Conner, and “knew too well the emotional toll a trial would take on family members.”
Jackie Travis, 49, was killed on Dec. 8, 2000, in her apartment in Merced, Calif. She had been beaten, stabbed and strangled.
Shela Polly, 33, was staying in the Modesto Gospel Mission when she crossed paths with Ward on Dec. 30. Her partially clad body was found at the base of an oak tree by a man walking a dog. She was strangled and stabbed.
Ward agreed to plead guilty to both murders after California prosecutors told him that DNA evidence linked him to both homicides. His only condition was a guarantee that they would get him in and out of California as quickly as possible.
Morse said it was “chilling to be in the same small room with a man we knew had committed four incredibly brutal murders, but both Birgit and I believed it was worth the gamble to resolve these cases and bring some closure to the families without the emotional pain of jury trials.”
Ward is scheduled to return to Montana next week after receiving two more life sentences.
“This ensures that this depraved individual will never see the light of day as a free man,” Fladager said
Both prosecutors said they intend to contact law enforcement agencies throughout the country asking them to review unsolved homicides in their jurisdictions for possible connections to Ward.
“We believe it highly unlikely that Ronald Ward started and stopped killing in 2000,” Morse said. “We are afraid there might be more victims out there and are going to work with national DNA databases to see if Ward might be linked to other murders.”
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jenny davis wrote on Sep 26, 2008 1:38 PM: