The Birthday Surprise

Kenneth Stahl was an anesthesiologist in Huntington Beach, California, married to Carolyn Oppy-Stahl, an optometrist. On November 20, 1999, Carolyn’s forty-fourth birthday, the two of them drove out to the Ortega Highway, a dark two-lane road through the hills of southern Orange County. Kenneth had been supporting his former mistress, medical secretary Adriana Vasco, and through her he had arranged to have Carolyn killed for thirty thousand dollars.

Vasco brought in her boyfriend, Dennis Earl Godley, who used a false name and was presented as a man with experience in that line of work. Godley ambushed the car that night and fired at least ten shots at close range. Carolyn died as arranged. Then Godley shot Kenneth as well, which was not part of the plan. A security guard found them in the idling car at about ten thirty. Investigators pulled Kenneth’s phone records, saw the calls to Vasco on the day of the killings, and traced the money and the plan back from there.

Vasco was arrested in November 2000 and charged the following month. In November 2002 a jury convicted her of first-degree murder in Carolyn’s death and second-degree murder in Kenneth’s, with multiple-murder and lying-in-wait special circumstances, and in January 2003 she was sentenced to life without parole. Godley pleaded guilty in May 2004 and was sentenced the following month to life without parole.