Murderous escape plan told

Bill Gang

Friday, Feb. 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

The brutal murder of a retired doctor in Sun City was Donald Sherman's second slaying, but if his bold and elaborate escape scheme had succeeded, it wouldn't have been his last, a District Court jury was told.

Sherman planned to hire a hitman to kill two guards and a doctor in the escape plot that was to be executed when he visited an optometrist's office, Deputy District Attorney David Roger said Thursday.

That jury, which convicted the 32-year-old defendant Wednesday of the 1994 beating death of Dr. Lester Bauer, must decide whether the appropriate punishment is life in prison or death.

During opening statements in the penalty hearing, Roger said Sherman already had received a life prison term for the 1981 murder he committed in Idaho and he didn't learn his lesson.

"There's only one sentence left, that's death," he said.

Sherman was 17 when he gunned down a grocery store owner with a .22-caliber pistol during a botched burglary in Sandpoint, Idaho. He plea-bargained the case for a sentence that returned him to the streets on parole in 1992.

Defense attorney David Schieck said that at the time Sherman was "a skinny boy ... who had started hanging with a drug crowd."

Two years after he was paroled, Sherman broke into Bauer's home, beat him to death with a hammer and stole his wallet with credit cards, his car and other possessions.

He had been the boyfriend of the doctor's daughter, Diane, but that relationship had ended unhappily.

Prosecutors said Sherman had killed and robbed Bauer to maintain the lavish lifestyle he had tasted while dating the woman.

He was caught a few days later on a Santa Barbara, Calif., street, where he had passed out in Bauer's car with the engine running. He had used the doctor's credit cards to purchase clothing, jewelry and alcohol.

Roger said that while in the Clark County Detention Center awaiting trial, Sherman made contact with a female prisoner by serenading her through an air conditioning vent that connected the cell units.

Kristina Kalter, who was charged with murder for giving her grandmother an overdose of drugs and eventually pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, gave Sherman the idea for the escape, Roger said.

She told him how she had been escorted from the jail to have contact lenses fitted, which any prisoner could have done if he or she had sufficient money.

In the plot, Sherman would make a similar visit to an optometrist and be met and freed by the hitman who would kill the guards and the doctor.

Roger said that despite being locked in his cell most of the day, Sherman made contact with another prisoner who agreed to find the hitman.

At the same time, Kalter had gained her freedom and was visiting Sherman in jail.

Roger said Sherman promised her "they would spend the rest of their lives together south of the border" if she could fund his contact lenses.

The plot fell apart, however, when the other prisoner went to police rather than hiring a killer.

Although Sherman has sat quietly in court and appeared almost bookish in his suit, spectacles and neatly cut hair, Roger said he showed a violent streak in jail.

The prosecutor explained that a "shank" -- a homemade knife -- had been found in Sherman's jail cell and he had been a discipline problem that resulted in his transfer to the maximum-security wing of the jail.

"That's where the worst of the worst go," Roger said, noting that Sherman repeatedly had threatened the life of a corrections officer.

The penalty hearing is scheduled to conclude early next week.