Second Child-Sex Offender Dies After California Inmate Jonathan Watson Beat Him With a Cane at Corcoran Prison
CORCORAN, CALIFORNIA – A second child molester who was convicted and serving a life sentence in the Central California state prison succumbed to his wounds and died after being attacked by a fellow inmate, according to a Wednesday announcement by state prison officials.
62-year-old Graham De Luis-Conti died from his injuries on Sunday, three days after he and another inmate were brutally beaten at the State Prison in Corcoran at its California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility, according to KTLA.
41-year-old Jonathan Watson used a walking cane to brutally strike De Luis-Conti and aged 48 David Bobb, which left both of the men with multiple head injuries.
We previously reported on the death of Mr. Bobb who died while being transported to a hospital. De Luis- Conti died later at the medical center.
Both of those men were serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the crime of aggravated sexual assault against a child under 14 years old.
Jonathan Watson is serving a life prison sentence for murder in the first degree. Watson has been at the Corcoran prison since September 4, 2009.
Watson Confessed to Both Killings in a Letter
A month after the attack, Jonathan Watson removed any doubt about what happened inside the dormitory pod. In a letter to the Bay Area News Group, he confessed to fatally beating both Graham De Luis-Conti and David Bobb on January 16, 2020, describing how he picked up a walking cane and struck the first man after the prisoner repeatedly turned a dayroom television to PBS Kids in front of other inmates. On his way to alert a guard and surrender, Watson wrote, he came upon the second man, whom he described as a known child predator, and decided to attack him as well. Corrections officials and the Kings County Coroner’s Office investigated the deaths, and records list both victims as having been serving life terms with the possibility of parole for aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14.
A Killing Watson Says Officials Were Warned About
What turned the case into a broader indictment of the prison system was Watson’s claim that he had tried to stop himself. He said his classification had recently been dropped from Level III to Level II, pulling him out of a single cell and into dormitory housing, a move he protested as careless. Roughly two hours before the beatings, Watson said, he warned a prison counselor that he urgently needed to return to higher security before he hurt someone, only to be brushed aside.
In May 2022, the California Office of the Inspector General confirmed that no California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation employee faced discipline over the deaths, even with Watson’s documented grievances and the housing decision that placed a man convicted of murder in close quarters with convicted child sex offenders. Watson remained in the state prison system with a parole date now set years into the future. The two deaths fit a grim and well-documented pattern: an Associated Press analysis found that male sex offenders, while a minority of California’s prison population, are killed at a sharply disproportionate rate behind bars, frequently singled out by other inmates for crimes against children. The same pattern shows up in our reporting on U.K. child sex offenders stabbed to death in prison, the later killing of Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins, and a California inmate who choked a child molester to death. For the networks those men belonged to before they were locked up, see Hiding in Plain Sight and the Elysium 87,000-member bust.
Previous article: A California Inmate Killed a Prisoner Serving Life Sentence for Child Sexual Assault
