Mother asked court to stop son’s execution

Brendan Riley

Friday, June 5, 1998 | 10:13 a.m.

CARSON CITY - The mother of a man sentenced to die for the 1994 hammer-crowbar killings of two U-Haul workers in Reno has petitioned to stop his June 13 execution on grounds he's suicidal and mentally incompetent.

Lydia Calambro, mother of Alvaro Calambro, 25, in what's known as a "next friend" petition filed Thursday in Washoe District Court, said her son is borderline mentally retarded and has symptoms of schizophrenia.

Michael Pescetta, the assistant federal defender who filed the petition for Mrs. Calambro, added that the condemned man, a native of the Philippines, has "vampire" fantasies, language difficulty and an IQ of only 71.

"All of these conditions substantially affect petitioner's ability to comprehend the legal proceedings, to communicate his concerns and to make rational choices, including the choices to institute or continue legal proceedings," Pescetta said.

Calambro also was neglected as a child, had a mentally ill father who abused his mother and sister, and gets his ideas from "watching television and other people who he copies," Pescetta said.

Pescetta also said Calambro has had no communication of any sort with his lawyers or his mother for almost two years, and the "next friend" legal status for his mother is proper to protect Calambro's rights.

The attorney also said a competence review conducted earlier by the Nevada Supreme Court was inadequate, and Calambro's desire to die "interfered with any rational understanding of the legal process."

Pescetta also said that when Calambro faced execution three years ago, he didn't really think he would die but would "go to sleep and then wake up, in the manner of a vampire."

"There is no basis for assuming the petitioner's level of rational understanding on the point has increased since then," he added.

Pescetta also argued that aggravating factors cited during Calambro's sentencing hearing didn't really fit the crime, and the process used to set up the sentencing panel resulted in "a tribunal organized to return a verdict of death."

The aggravating factors included a prior criminal record, evidence that the killer is depraved, and random choice of a murder victim.

Calambro got the death sentence for killing Keith Christopher, 21, by crushing his skull with a hammer, and for murdering Peggy Crawford, 38, by driving a crowbar through her head.

An accomplice, Duc Huynh, who had been fired from his job at the center just before the murders, also got the death sentence but hanged himself at Ely State Prison.

After the killings, Huynh and Calambro fled and were arrested following a crime spree that began in Sacramento and ended with a high-speed highway chase, the kidnapping of a woman security guard in Los Angeles, and a 9 1/2 -hour standoff.

Calambro's family has maintained he wasn't to blame and that Huynh was responsible for the murders. Family members also said Calambro, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1982, had no earlier record of serious crimes and managed to get along until meeting Huynh, who they described as violent and mentally disturbed.