The three people convicted in the 2007 murder of a Tsawwassen man in California were last week sentenced to life in prison.
On Friday, Jackie Lynn Dunson, Fernando Antonio Benavidez and Ronald Wesley Handwerk were sentenced in Riverside County Superior Court to life in prison with no possibility of parole. All three were convicted earlier this year after a 10-day trial.
Bill Dobbs, 48, was found murdered on the side of the road in Indio, California in November 2007.
Dobbs was last seen alive leaving the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino with another man, later identified as Fernando Antonio Benavidez, one of the accused in the case, at around 3: 45 a.m. on Nov. 26, 2007.
A passing motorist found his body on the side of an Indio road the next day. His throat had been slashed.
Jackie Dunson, Benavidez and Handwerk were tried together in the murder. Two other suspects, Robert Lee Dunson and Rogelio Leon Zuniga are being tried separately.
All five pleaded not guilty. Benavidez is accused of luring Dobbs to the Dunson apartment where he was allegedly beaten and robbed. Zuniga and Robert Dunson are accused of taking Dobbs to a remote area where his throat was slashed multiple times. A passing motorist found his body the next day alongside a road north of Indio.
Dobbs had recently bought a home in the Indio area and was staying there with his common-law wife, Toni Dawson, at the time of his murder.
"It was awful. He was tortured very, very badly," Dawson said in an interview after the conviction in April. "They were using him like a piñata. They did all sorts of horrible things to him."
The couple had been planning on returning to Canada in the near future for Christmas. The avid golfer was a longtime member of the Beach Grove Golf Club. He had two grown children and a grandson. Dobbs had a family-owned window cleaning and janitorial company, Excelsior Buildings Maintenance.
