{"id":64901,"date":"2026-05-10T12:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T12:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/64901\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T12:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T12:46:15","slug":"california-da-tears-into-gavin-newsom-for-letting-convicted-rapist-and-murderer-walk-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/64901\/","title":{"rendered":"California DA tears into Gavin Newsom for letting convicted rapist and murderer walk free"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who pleaded guilty to brutally raping and murdering a woman<\/a> in San Luis Obispo County is set to walk free after Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to block his parole \u2014 despite a prosecutor\u2019s repeated pleas to keep him behind bars. <\/p>\n

Alberto Tamez Jr., 75, who was convicted of viciously raping and strangling Genevieve Adaline Moreno in 1974, was granted parole by the state board late last year despite San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow fighting his release at every step.<\/p>\n

Alberto Tamez Jr. will walk free after Gov. Gavin Newsom decided not to intervene on a parole decision. County of San Luis Obispo<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s office could have intervened and kept Tamez locked up, but chose to cut him loose \u2014 leading Dow to condemn the governor\u2019s inaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the right thing would be to stop letting violent criminals out of our prisons just to satisfy his policy desire to empty prisons,\u201d Dow exclusively told The California Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t change the system he created without letting voters know how vulnerable they are by letting out dangerous criminals to empty prisons,\u201d he added. \u201cI think the governor should not be letting everyone out, but he\u2019s made no bones about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom has not publicly addressed his decision and his office did not respond to the Post\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Newsom has not explained why he decided not to block the release of Tamez. REUTERS<\/p>\n

District Attorney Dan Dow said reforms on parole have gone too far in letting dangerous criminal to walk free. San Luis Obispo County District Attorney<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you rape, strangle, brutalize and murder a woman \u2014 in my perspective and point of view \u2014 that should be the death penalty or life without parole,\u201d Dow said.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s lack of action in the Tamez case has led to shock and anger, as it comes on the heels of other of high-profile parole decisions.<\/p>\n

He is one of several inmates who have recently benefited from California\u2019s parole reforms, especially the Newsom-backed Elderly Parole Program, which allows inmates 50 or older who have served at least 20 years behind bars to seek parole consideration.<\/p>\n

Gregory Lee Vogelsang<\/a>, a 57-year-old Sacramento-area child molester, was sentenced to 355 years to life for kidnapping and molesting five boys. He was granted parole in late 2025 before the parole board later agreed to reconsider the release.<\/p>\n

Gregory Lee Vogelsang molested five boys before being arrested. Sacramento County Sheriff\u0092s Office<\/p>\n

David Allen Funston abused numerous children before going to prison. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation<\/p>\n

Israel Ceja raped his stepdaughter and admitted to being attracted to young girls. yoloda.org<\/p>\n

David Allen Funston, a serial child molester convicted in 1999<\/a> of kidnapping and sexually assaulting multiple children younger than 7 in Sacramento County, was also set for release after a parol board decision until Placer County prosecutors stepped in with new charges.<\/p>\n

Israel Ceja, a Yolo County man, was sentenced to 139 years in prison in 2000<\/a> for repeatedly raping and molesting his stepdaughter beginning when she was 11 years old. Ceja, who later admitted during a parole hearing that he was still attracted to young girls, was initially recommended for release before the parole board reversed the decision after backlash from Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig.<\/p>\n

Dow said his office repeatedly fought against Tamez\u2019s release, including sending a deputy district attorney to oppose his parole during the December board hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen California reforms the system, policymakers focus on making it more compassionate for criminals while forgetting about the impact on victims,\u201d the prosecutor continued. \u201cI think Californians are at a point where they have had enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton also ripped Newsom over the decision. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sick of hearing from Gavin Newsom that he has no power to intervene in these outrageous and disgusting decisions,\u201d he told The Post.\u00a0\u201cThat is total bulls\u2013t and he knows it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tamez pleaded no contest in 1974 after targeting Moreno, 56, who was working a shift at a bar in the blue-collar farming community of Nipomo. Her badly beaten body was discovered about a quarter-mile away in a field under a grove of eucalyptus trees.<\/p>\n

Tamez has been a prisoner at the California Men\u2019s Colony in the hills of San Luis Obispo County. Shutterstock \/ Sundry Photography<\/p>\n

He pleaded no contest to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Dow argued that no one at that time of his conviction would have ever expected he\u2019d go free today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1974, at that time when he was sentenced, nobody was ever getting released for his kind of crime. The law didn\u2019t allow for it,\u201d Dow said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood behavior didn\u2019t mean anything \u2014 the heinousness of the crime kept you in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the California Morning Report newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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Now, decades later and with no surviving family to speak on Moreno\u2019s behalf, her killer will be released into society.\u00a0The murder in the summer of 1974 remains haunting to this day.<\/p>\n

Investigators identified Tamez as the lone attacker after finding blood on his clothes and debris from the crime scene stuck to his clothing.\u00a0He admitted to dragging Moreno from the bar, beating her while she begged him to stop and leaving her unconscious after he could no longer detect her breathing, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

The district attorney said his office has increasingly tried to shift public attention back toward crime victims instead of offenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of my role as president of the California District Attorneys Association, my office has started using the phrase \u2018criminal and victim justice system\u2019 instead of \u2018criminal justice system,\u2019\u201d Dow said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cContinuing to call it the \u2018criminal justice system\u2019 overlooks the fact that every crime has a victim.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who pleaded guilty to brutally raping and murdering a woman in San Luis Obispo County is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[544,542,27080,12423,51,12471,12033,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-64901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gavin-newsom","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-gavin-newsom","10":"tag-murders","11":"tag-parole","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-prisons","14":"tag-rape","15":"tag-us-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116550355219006832","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}