A 62-year-old woman may face the death penalty after she was convicted of murdering her trucker husband in order to collect insurance money.
Lorraine Alison Hunter is scheduled to be sentenced on December 8th, 2017 for the murder that occurred on November 4th, 2009.
According to Banning Patch, on the evening of November 3rd, Lorraine Hunter, her daughter Briuana Hunter, and her husband Albert Thomas went walking several blocks to Thomas’s rig, where he was keeping a gift for Briuana.
When the family reached the semi truck parked in an abandoned lot, Thomas entered the sleeper berth while Hunter and Briuana sat in the front seats. As Thomas was searching for the gift, Hunter shot him twice in the back of the head, then twice in the back. Thomas died in the cab and Hunter and her daughter left.
It was later discovered that Hunter had stolen the small-caliber handgun from an elderly member of her church.
On November 4th, 2009, officials discovered Albert Thomas shot to death in the sleeper berth of his semi truck in the abandoned lot in Moreno Valley, California.
As police investigated the murder, Thomas’s wife, Lorraine Hunter, tried to collect more than $1 million in life insurance money, but could not because she was unable to obtain a certified copy of Thomas’s certificate of death.
Hunter was interviewed immediately after the murder of her husband but was not arrested as a suspect until 2011. She then went to trial.
As the jury investigated the case, it was discovered that Hunter had contacted Thomas’s employer regarding the value of Thomas’s life insurance just prior to his death.
“The administrator at the trucking company told detectives that Hunter, prior to Thomas being found dead, had personally been told about the policies and that they doubled in the case of a murder,” said the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office in a press release.
Thomas had two $250,000 policies with the trucking company, which would double to a value of nearly $1 million if Thomas was murdered.
During the trial, detectives also discovered that just 6 months before Thomas’s death, Hunter forged his signature on a document for an additional life insurance policy for $750,000. This would bring the value of Thomas’s life insurance policies to over $1.5 million.
Hunter’s daughter, 23-year-old Briuana Hunter, also testified during the trial. Claiming that she and her mother had been planning Thomas’s death for months.
“She told me, `We need to figure something out,” Briuana said at trial.
“She said that we needed the money. At first, I didn’t know what she meant, but later on, it became clear… I don’t want to be up here testifying against my mother, but it’s the right thing to do after what happened.”
Briuana described Thomas as a “calm, quiet person” that was “never overly aggressive.”
“I did what my mother told me to do, she said we needed to get rid of him. I felt hurt and confused. He was the only father figure I knew. But I never questioned her because she was my mom and … I was loyal to her first,” she said.
Briuana has pled guilty to three counts of attempted murder and one count of voluntary manslaughter. She is expected to be sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Detectives also discovered during the trial that this is not Lorraine Hunter’s first involvement with this kind of situation. Back in 1996, Hunter’s then-husband was murdered in Inglewood, California. At that time, she collected around $312,000 in life insurance money.
No one was ever charged in that case.
On August 21st, 2017, Lorraine Hunter was convicted of first-degree murder for financial gain, with the jury and DA recommending the death penalty.
Her sentencing date is December 8th, 2017.
