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The California Supreme Court in San Francisco Monday unanimously upheld the death sentence of an ex-Marine convicted of fatally stabbing a Livermore nurse in her home 26 years ago.
Richard Tully, 53, was sentenced to death in Alameda County Superior Court in 1992 after being convicted of the 1986 murder and assault with intent to commit rape of Shirley Olsson, 59.
The jury also found a special circumstance of murder committed during a burglary, which allowed the imposition of the death penalty.
Olsson, a nurse at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Livermore, was killed during the night of July 24, 1986.
A co-worker found her nude body in her Livermore home the next morning. Olsson had been stabbed 23 times. Her purse, containing no money, and the knife used in the murder were found in a golf course next to her house.
At the time, Tully was a 27-year-old unemployed heavy equipment operator who had previously served in the Marines. He had recently been staying at his mother’s boyfriend’s house two doors down from Olsson’s, and continued to use that address as his mailing address.
Tully was arrested in March 1987 after a Livermore police officer who stopped him on suspicion of driving with a suspended license and possessing methamphetamine noticed that his license showed an address two houses away from Olsson’s.
A fingerprint check then showed a fingerprint and palm print of Tully’s on the knife.
In an interview with police, Tully admitted he had entered Olsson’s house while being drunk and tried to have sex with her, but alleged the killer was another man nicknamed “Doubting Thomas.”
The state high court rejected a series of appeal claims by Tully, including an argument that there was insufficient evidence that he burglarized the house with the intent to commit rape or theft.
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