Believing his girlfriend of five months engaged in affairs with other men, Rodney Lyn Oglesby worked himself into an October 2005 tizzy. It didn’t help that one night after Karen Corbin’s shift at Wal-Mart she refused to return to the couple’s home, a room at the Crest Motel on seedy West Lincoln in Anaheim. Corbin’s act of defiance was understandable. A calm Oglesby had called her at work to say that her gray and white striped, three-month-old kitten had hissed at him and, in retaliation, he’d broken the kitten’s neck.
(Later, the killing would lead to the following priceless exchange in court between a prosecutor and Anaheim police officer Cheryl Lynn Murphy: Prosecutor: Did you find the cat inside the Dumpster? Murphy: Yes. Prosecutor: Can you describe what the cat looked like? Murphy: It looked dead.)
When Corbin arrived home the next morning by bus, Oglesby decided he knew the reason for her absence. She’d stayed away to sleep with another man, he insisted. He also described how he’d shaken her kitten to death and left its corpse to grow cold on the floor before tossing it, and its toys, in the trash.
“He was angry,” Corbin testified. “He was mad. He tore up the room.”
A frightened Corbin went to the motel manager’s office hoping he’d call police. He said no. That’s when 5-foot-6, 181-pound Oglesby showed up, ordered her back to their room and began pulling her by the arm in the parking lot. She sat down on the ground. Oglesby pretended to walk away, spun around and kicked her in her left eye. The blow was so powerful it fractured her face bone and caused severe bleeding. He then dragged her by her hair, tearing out huge clumps, repeatedly punched her face and called her a bitch.
The lunchtime scene prompted several bystanders to call 911. One, a neighbor named Cisco, ran to Corbin’s rescue and said, “That’s enough!” Oglesby responded by accusing Cisco of sleeping with his girlfriend too, cursed more and attempted to flee responding police on a bicycle.
During court proceedings, Oglesby—sent to Alabama prisons twice in the 1990s for committing felonies, including burglary—employed the insanity defense. He has a “a significant and severe organic impairment in his brain,” declared his court-appointed lawyer. But after multiple psychiatric evaluations (at public expense), Judge Gary Paer ruled the 42-year-old competent enough to face charges. Oglesby accepted a plea deal. For multiple acts of stupidity including domestic violence and cruelty to an animal, he’s spending six years in a California prison.
(Every Wednesday at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)
-- R. Scott Moxley
“You motherfucking asshole. What the fuck are you doing? I’m going to fucking kill you.” A startled McGuinn turned to Tu and said, “We’ve got to get out of here!” He quickly backed his car away and Rivers made his second escape attempt. Cops immediately nabbed him. Rivers explained that he’d been in a hurry to get his nagging girlfriend to her work. 
where he stripped, molested and raped his girlfriend’s mute, developmentally disabled 12-year-old daughter. Caught in the act by the little girl’s horrified uncle, Reyes declared he’d gotten “vengeance” against his girlfriend. When police arrived, Reyes tried to blame the consumption of 13 beers and, perhaps sensing he wasn’t winning sympathy, finally suggested that he'd mounted the girl only to save her from an alleged epileptic seizure. The tale might have had a slight chance if his DNA hadn’t been found in the girl’s vagina. “Well, I’ve touched her,” he told a police detective the next day. “I’m not saying that I haven’t. But she likes me like you wouldn’t believe, that’s why I regret this.” He also declared himself “a normal person,” cried, noted his otherwise-clean criminal record, begged for “forgiveness” and suggested counseling as punishment. Police and prosecutors weren’t impressed. Based on their work, an Orange County jury convicted Reyes, who has a wife and kids in Mexico, on three felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor. For an hour's worth of stupidity, he won a free trip to a California prison. It’ll be his home for a decade.