Criminal cases that shook Sacramento-area communities saw courtrooms in 2025
A Yolo County murder trial that relived the terror of a 2023 Davis stabbing spree. The Placer County criminal trial of a former major league pitcher-turned murder suspect in his in-laws’ Lake Tahoe slayings. The shocking torching and sudden destruction of a Northern California landmark. A death verdict for a convicted cop killer. The Roseville adoptive father sentenced for his young son’s murder.
The stories that shook Davis and Lake Tahoe, Chico, Roseville and the capital city, wended their way through Sacramento-area courtrooms in 2025; some cases finding resolution in a jury’s verdict and judge’s sentence; while others must wait for judgment in the New Year.
Davis stabbing trial deadlocks, prompting new trial
A new trial for Carlos Reales Dominguez, the former UC Davis student acquitted of murder in June in the 2023 Davis stabbing spree that left two men dead and a woman seriously injured, is set for early 2026 in Yolo Superior Court in Woodland.
Dominguez remains held in Yolo County Jail awaiting a second trial in the April 2023 knife killings of David Breaux, 50, and Karim Abou Najm, 20, at Davis’ Central and Sycamore parks.
Kimberlee Guillory, then 64, was attacked days later in May 2023 while in her tent near downtown Davis, but survived the attack and later testified in the months-long first trial. The serial attacks in April and May 2023 paralyzed Davis.
Dominguez, who was diagnosed with the symptoms of schizophrenia and spent months committed to state hospital, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murder and attempted murder in the attacks, later testifying at trial.
Yolo County prosecutors now argue the brutal knife attacks were brought on not by diagnosed schizophrenia, but by Dominguez’s prolonged, heavy use of potent cannabis.
Former MLB pitcher convicted in Lake Tahoe in-laws’ slaying
Placer County jurors in July convicted former major league pitcher Daniel Serafini of shooting his in-laws in a 2021 murder-burglary at their Homewood residence near Lake Tahoe.
Jurors in July convicted Daniel Serafini, 51, of first-degree murder in the death of his father-in-law, Gary Spohr, 70, and found the former pitcher guilty of attempted murder in the shootings that severely wounded his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood, 68. Serafini faces the possibility of life in state prison.
Spohr died from a single shot to the head from Serafini during the June 5, 2021, burglary at the home on Lake Tahoe’s west shore. Wood survived the shooting, but needed extensive rehabilitation in its aftermath and died a year later.
Serafini reportedly hated his wife’s wealthy parents, prosecutors said, telling friends that he would offer $20,000 to whoever would carry out their killings.
Bidwell Mansion arsonist sentenced to 11 years
Kevin Alexander Carlson, the man who burned down Bidwell Mansion, the Chico and Northern California landmark, in December 2024, was sentenced in Butte County to 11 years in prison in March.
The December 2024 arson blaze that destroyed the Chico touchstone built by the Butte County city’s founding father devastated and shocked the community.
“No words,” said former Chico Mayor Andrew Coolidge in a social media post at the time. “The historic home ... represented not just a home of the founder of our city but an iconic location to all of us.”
Carlson, 30, surfaced as a suspect after a weeks-long search, admitting in a defense statement in Butte Superior Court to setting the landmark mansion ablaze out of a sense of personal frustration and class resentment.
“I never meant to cause that much structural damage, though I guess that doesn’t count for much at this point,” Carlson wrote.
Carlson received the maximum 11-year sentence for felony arson and was ordered to pay more than $37 million in restitution.
Death verdict delivered in Sacramento officer’s killing
Adel Ramos will spend the rest of his days on California’s death row for the June 2019 ambush killing of Sacramento police officer Tara O’Sullivan outside his Del Paso Heights home after jurors in March delivered the death verdict.
Ramos pleaded guilty in August 2019 to gunning down the young Sacramento officer in the ambush, laying siege to O’Sullivan’s fellow officers from self-fashioned “murder holes” inside his Del Paso Heights home.
Sacramento County prosecutors said Ramos pinned down Sacramento officers with gunfire as a mortally wounded O’Sullivan lay in Ramos’ backyard, preventing her rescue for nearly an hour. Ramos later surrendered to police.
Jurors in the second penalty phase of Ramos’ capital trial delivered the death verdict in March. A previous jury deadlocked prompting a second trial.
O’Sullivan was 26 and still in training just six months on the job when she responded to the domestic disturbance call at Ramos’ residence.
The city of Sacramento honored the fallen officer in 2022, renaming the city’s H Street Bridge spanning the American River the Tara O’Sullivan Memorial Bridge.
Roseville adoptive father sentenced in son’s death; mom to go on trial
Cory Albert Blakley was sentenced in March in Placer Superior Court in the death of his adopted 9-year-old son, who was beaten and suffocated in the living room of the family’s Roseville home. Blakley’s wife, Kimberly Rachel Blakley, also faces murder and torture charges in their son’s death and faces trial in April.
Cyrus Blakley, 9, was beaten and suffocated Feb. 2, 2024, in his family’s Roseville living room, in earshot of his six siblings, inside a home Placer County prosecutors would call a “house of horrors.” Cyrus died three days later at a hospital.
Prosecutors said Kimberly Blakley brutally punished Cyrus, sitting on, spanking and suffocating him face down on the couch for about 40 minutes while he cried for help and gasped for air, after the boy told classmates about a dead dog at their home.
Cory Blakley watched the abuse from the kitchen but did nothing to stop it, said prosecutors.
In March, Cory Albert Blakley, 39, was sentenced in Placer Superior Court to 15 years to life for second-degree murder in 9-year-old Cyrus’ 2024 death. His wife, Kimberly, also 39, who carried the boy’s battered body upstairs from the living room, stands charged with murder and torture charges in Cyrus’ death.
Kimberly Blakley faces trial in Placer Superior Court in April 2026.
Trials ahead in Sacramento’s most serious cases
The Sacramento Bee will look ahead to other prominent local Superior Court cases in 2026 including:
• The scheduled trial in the April 2022 mass shooting on Sacramento’s K Street that killed six people and wounded 12 in a shootout between rival gangs. Defense attorneys are seeking a change of venue from Sacramento in hearings set for January and again in February.
• Troy Davis, charged in the murder and attempted rape of Mary Kate Tibbitts, 61, inside her Sacramento home in 2021. A Sacramento Superior Court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 16 in the Land Park woman’s killing.
• Eric James Abril, the man accused of killing a hostage and wounding two other people during a 2023 police standoff at a Roseville’s Mahany Park, will stand trial in March in Placer Superior Court. A hearing to confirm the trial date is set for Jan. 7.
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