Inmate killed in Folsom prison attack identified as man convicted of 2003 murder
An inmate killed last week during an attack at California State Prison, Sacramento, in Folsom, has been identified as a convicted murderer, whose strange sentencing-hearing-turned-wedding made headlines in 2013.
The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office has identified the man killed in the Nov. 25 attack as Danne Desbrow, 42.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in a news release last week identified the suspected attackers as Joshua J. Dunn, 24, and Stephen C. Dunckhurst, 51.
The CDCR said the two inmates were seen by staff attacking another inmate in the prison’s general population yard around 2:45 p.m. that day. Prison guards used pepper spray and blast grenades to stop the attack, after the assailants ignored officers’ orders to get on the ground, according to the news release.
Desbrow was pronounced dead at the facility’s health services building about 40 minutes later, according to CDCR.
After a decade-long investigation, Desbrow was convicted for the 2003 first-degree murder of Kevin Santos in Lemon Grove, a cold case cracked after a key witness came forward with new information.
At Desbrow’s sentencing on Sept. 17, 2013, San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cookson sentenced him to 53 years to life in prison.
Then, that same judge married Desbrow and his bride, Destiny Desbrow, minutes later in the very same courtroom, as reported at the time by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Cookson even presented the couple with a cake she baked herself, the Union-Tribune reported.
“Judges frequently marry people, and occasionally perform marriage ceremonies for people in custody,” reporter Greg Moran, wrote for the Union-Tribune, in 2013. “But doing so in the courtroom after sending the groom to a lifetime behind bars is pretty much unheard of.”
Even Desbrow’s defense attorney said he had “never seen anything like that,” the San Diego newspaper reported.
The CDCR is investigating Desbrow’s death last week as a homicide, according to a news release. Prison staff say Dunn and Dunckhurst used prison-made weapons in the fatal attack.
Authorities said Dunn was halfway through a four-year sentence for first- and second-degree burglary as well as vehicle theft, and Dunckhurst in 2005 was sentenced to life in prison under a third-strike vehicle theft case.
Dunckhurst was suspected of killing inmate Devlin Stringfellow in January 2018; had received an additional life sentence for assaulting another inmate in Kings County in 2010; and had another sentence of two years and eight months added for taking a prison guard’s weapon, according to the CDCR.
This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 12:02 PM.
