A Yolo County jury took two and a half hours on October 30 to convict William Carl Gardner III of first degree murder with special circumstances for fatally shooting the girlfriend who had rejected him while she was parked in normally quiet downtown Winters.
During the week of the trial, nobody denied District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s assertion that the terrible murder of Leslie Pinkston had taken place. “It is the ultimate, intentional, violent exercise of power and control over another human being,” Reisig said of Gardner’s alleged actions on November 18, 2013, the morning after 32-year-old Pinkston told Gardner via text that their relationship was “over and done.”
Angered and desperate, “he wanted to reclaim total power and total control, and show her and everyone else that no one f—s with William Gardner,” Reisig said.
The six-man, six-woman jury could have convicted Gardner of second-degree murder. To do so, they would have had to have determined his actions were not willful, deliberate and premeditated, nor were they committed while lying in wait.
Victim Leslie Pinkston
During the trial, Nicole Bewley, a Sacramento resident, testified that Gardner enlisted her to drive him to Winters the morning of the murder. Witnesses on Railroad Avenue in downtown Winters reported hearing screams and gunshots coming from Pinkston’s parked vehicle. Then Gardner calmly walked away. He had slipped into the back seat of Pinkston’s vehicle and, Reisig said, “executed her.”
The weapon linking Gardner to the murder, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, was in his possession when U.S. Marshals arrested him in Las Vegas after a multistate manhunt. Ballistics tests showed the pistol was used to kill Pinkston, prosecutors said.
Sentencing will take place on December 1 in Yolo Superior Court.
Read More:
The Davis Enterprise: Gardner guilty of murder, with special circumstances
CrimeVoice: Yolo Grand Jury Indicts Suspect In Ex-Girlfriend’s Killing
