On January 3, 1984 Letter carrier Ida Jean Haxton, a 30-year-old mother of two, was nearing the end of her postal route in southeast Huntington Beach when she was ambushed by a lone man. He beat her with a baseball bat, stabbed her 19 times with a hunting knife and left her body in a church parking lot more than a mile away.

She had been a letter carrier for 3 1/2 years at the time. The new route, he said, put her in proximity to some family living in the area, and provided her an opportunity to relax at the beach.

Nearing the end of her route on the afternoon of Jan. 3, 1984, she was attacked on Jon Jay Drive by a resident of the neighborhood, Gabriel Deluca, then 18, court records show.

According to evidence given an Orange County Superior Court jury, which later convicted him of first-degree murder, Deluca stabbed her 19 times in the chest, face and back. She died from a blow to the back of the head that Deluca inflicted with a baseball bat, the jury found.

Deluca stuffed her body in the back seat of her leased postal car and left it parked in a Costa Mesa church parking lot. After the body was found a short time later that day, bloodhounds flown in from Texas traced her path to the curb in front of Deluca’s house, and her blood was found on the porch, in the entryway and on several steps leading to an upstairs bedroom.

Deluca was arrested the day after the murder and was convicted of first-degree murder in June, 1984, despite his plea of insanity. But Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride set aside the conviction on technical grounds and a new trial was ordered. A state appeals court, however, upheld the jury’s conviction and Deluca was sentenced to between 26 years and life imprisonment.