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Jurors convicted Daniel Gunnarsson of murdering Katie Pham. (Images: Kern County District Attorney’s Office)
A murder defendant may well spend the rest of his days behind bars for ambushing an unrequited romantic interest.
Records out of Kern County, California, show that Daniel Gunnarsson, 23, was sentenced on Thursday to 27 years and four months to life in prison, with 892 days credit (almost two and a half years) for time served. In addition, he must pay a total of $440.00 in fees and restitution.
Jurors convicted Gunnarsson at the end of August for murder in the first degree and mutilating a corpse.
Prosecutors have described him as terrorizing the victim, Katie Pham, 21, up to the time of the murder. The two briefly had a casual relationship, but Gunnarsson started acting hostile toward her.
In one example, he picked Pham up from Las Vegas several days before the murder and drove erratically at high speeds because she was on the phone and not paying attention to him, one of her friends told KGET.
This friend also claimed to overhear Gunnarsson insult Pham over the phone when she did not want to go to his home. When Pham did not return his feelings, Gunnarsson soured.
He called the victim a “dumb b—,” prosecutor Samantha Allen said, according to KGET.
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Authorities said Gunnarsson showed animosity toward Pham and expressed what his friends thought to be suicidal behavior.
Investigators said that in May 2021, he called her, apologized, and asked to pick her up. She agreed, and he picked her up from her apartment and took her back to his stepfather’s residence in Kern County, authorities said.
There, Gunnarsson led her to the RV garage.
“Shortly thereafter, painters at the residence heard a female screaming, followed by shuffling of items,” they wrote.
Investigators determined that Gunnarsson put on gloves and used a 24-inch ice ax to hit her 10 times in the head, neck, and face. After that, he touched “her remains in a sexual manner.” He took off some of her clothes during this process.
When the painters opened the garage to continue their work, they found Gunnarsson covered in blood.
His pants were “saturated” with blood, which covered his hands and neck, authorities said in a KGET report. Pham lay face down on a mattress topper.
“Our only consolation would be for justice to be served so that Katie could rest easy and Ridgecrest as a community could rest easy with her,” her father, Tom Pham, said in a vigil in June 2021, according to The Daily Independent.
