A man who had already been convicted for murdering his girlfriend pleaded guilty Monday, Sept. 28, to voluntary manslaughter in the killing of a man he robbed in Laguna Beach in 1978.
Walter Lawrence Dalie, 61, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, according to court records. He faces a maximum sentence of 11 years, but because of his time served already he will likely be released after his sentencing, said Orange County District Attorney spokeswoman Kimberly Edds.
Dalie initially faced murder charges but his ex-wife, a key witness in the case, could not fly into California to testify due to COVID-19 related restrictions, Edds said, prompting prosecutors to agree to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
The plea comes almost 42 years after Brent Stapleton Tobey was found stabbed multiple times at his home in Laguna Beach on Nov. 20, 1978.
It wasn’t until 2010 that a DNA sample left at the scene linked Dalie to the crime when it was submitted to a national database, Laguna Beach police said. At the time Dalie was already serving a 50-year sentence for murdering his girlfriend in Newington, Conn. in 1985.
Tobey, 55, was an architect and active member of Laguna Beach committees and organizations, police said.
He and his friend had been witnesses in the conviction of James Scramlin, who was accused of murdering their friend. Mere hours after Scramlin was convicted, Tobey was found dead. While the death did not seem like a coincidence, police did not find a link between Tobey’s killing and the Scramlin case.
Authorities later came to believe that Dalie, then 19 and living in Newport Beach, stole a ring from Tobey before or after killing him.
After his DNA was linked, Dalie was charged with Tobey’s killing in September 2011 but the case was dismissed in 2015 because two key witnesses died and investigators needed to do more forensic analysis, prosecutors said at the time. Dalie was sent back to Connecticut to continue serving his sentence in his girlfriend’s murder.
In March 2019, he was charged again for Tobey’s killing and brought back to Orange County.
It will be determined at Dalie’s sentencing if he will be under any supervision upon his release, Edds said.
Source: Orange County Register
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