{"id":50401,"date":"2020-01-18T12:53:11","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T20:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theaegisalliance.com\/?p=50401"},"modified":"2026-08-27T18:14:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T01:14:57","slug":"california-inmate-killed-prisoner-serving-life-sentence-child-sexual-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/2020\/01\/18\/california-detenuto-ucciso-detenuto-servizio-vita-pena-vita-bambino-violenza-sessuale\/","title":{"rendered":"California Inmate Jonathan Watson Beat Two Child-Sex Offenders to Death With a Cane at Corcoran"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div  style=\"display: block; margin: 0px auto;\"  id=\"_ytid_63777\"  width=\"480\" height=\"270\"  data-origwidth=\"480\" data-origheight=\"270\" data-facadesrc=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bChvFq2O7DU?enablejsapi=1&#038;origin=https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=0&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;disablekb=0&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" data-epautoplay=\"1\" ><img decoding=\"async\" data-spai-excluded=\"true\" class=\"epyt-facade-poster skip-lazy\" loading=\"lazy\"  alt=\"California inmate kills convicted child molester during attack, officials say\"  src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/bChvFq2O7DU\/maxresdefault.jpg\"  \/><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\" aria-label=\"Play\"><svg data-no-lazy=\"1\" height=\"100%\" version=\"1.1\" viewBox=\"0 0 68 48\" width=\"100%\"><path class=\"ytp-large-play-button-bg\" d=\"M66.52,7.74c-0.78-2.93-2.49-5.41-5.42-6.19C55.79,.13,34,0,34,0S12.21,.13,6.9,1.55 C3.97,2.33,2.27,4.81,1.48,7.74C0.06,13.05,0,24,0,24s0.06,10.95,1.48,16.26c0.78,2.93,2.49,5.41,5.42,6.19 C12.21,47.87,34,48,34,48s21.79-0.13,27.1-1.55c2.93-0.78,4.64-3.26,5.42-6.19C67.94,34.95,68,24,68,24S67.94,13.05,66.52,7.74z\" fill=\"#f00\"><\/path><path d=\"M 45,24 27,14 27,34\" fill=\"#fff\"><\/path><\/svg><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>CORCORAN, CALIFORNIA \u2014<\/strong> Jonathan Watson beat two child-sex offenders to death with a walking cane inside the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility on January 16, 2020. He was already in for murder.<\/p>\n<p>Watson, then 41, of Humboldt County, had served about ten years of a life term for first-degree murder and discharging a firearm causing great bodily injury or death. He had been at Corcoran since September 4, 2009. The first man he struck, 48-year-old David Bobb of San Diego County, was serving life for the aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14. Bobb died on the way to an outside hospital. The second, 62-year-old Graham De Luis-Conti, also in for the aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14, died three days later. Both had been housed in a substance-abuse dorm of more than 5,400 inmates.<\/p>\n<h2>The Letter: PBS Kids, a Cane, and a Counselor Who Scoffed<\/h2>\n<p>In February 2020 Watson mailed a confession to the Bay Area News Group. He said a man he called &#8220;Molester #1&#8221; kept turning the dayroom television to PBS Kids in front of other prisoners, which Watson took as a taunt. He picked up another inmate&#8217;s cane. On his way to alert a guard and surrender, he wrote, he came upon the second man and decided to attack him as well. He also said he had a paper trail of grievances, and that roughly two hours before the attack he told a counselor he needed to be moved back to higher security &#8220;before I really mess one of these dudes up.&#8221; He said he was scoffed at and dismissed. His classification had recently been dropped from Level III to Level II, pulling him out of a single cell and into dormitory housing \u2014 a week before the killings.<\/p>\n<p>A 2015 Associated Press analysis found male sex offenders in California prisons were being killed at about double their share of the population: roughly 15 percent of inmates, nearly 30 percent of murder victims. In May 2022 the state Office of the Inspector General confirmed that nobody at CDCR was disciplined, despite Watson&#8217;s complaints and the reclassification that put a murderer in a dorm with convicted child-sex offenders. Watson&#8217;s own parole eligibility was pushed to 2038.<\/p>\n<p>The AEGIS Alliance is not in the business of romanticizing prison killings. Two men serving life for raping children are dead. A murderer who warned staff he was about to explode was left in the room with them. That is a classification failure, not a folk tale. Related: <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2020\/01\/23\/2nd-child-molester-dies-prison-attack-california-inmate\/\">the second death at Corcoran<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2019\/10\/14\/uk-worst-pedophiles-stabbed-death-prison\/\">Richard Huckle&#8217;s killing at Full Sutton<\/a>, the later killing of <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2023\/08\/06\/ian-watkins-ex-lostprophets-singer-and-convicted-pedophile-stabbed-in-prison\/\">Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins<\/a>, a California inmate who <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2021\/03\/31\/child-molester-chokes-to-death\/\">choked a child molester to death<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/category\/news\/crime-news\/\">Crime News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Watson used a cane to kill two Corcoran inmates serving life for child sexual assault. He had warned staff he was about to explode. Nobody was disciplined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,196370,24],"tags":[188009,207112,14108,195845,195846,197013],"class_list":["post-50401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-crime-news","category-us-news","tag-california","tag-corcoran","tag-crime","tag-crime-news","tag-crime-watch","tag-crimes-against-children"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Jonathan-Watson-booking-photo-California-prison-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50401"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1198807,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50401\/revisions\/1198807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}