ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A 57-year-old man was convicted on Tuesday of robbing a gas station, a crime that took place less than three months after he had been paroled on decades-old murder convictions.
Randy Lee Osborne will be sentenced Oct. 3 and faces at least 15 to 20 years in prison and a possible term of 99 years for the robbery that netted less than $500, prosecutors said.
He had been sentenced to two consecutive life terms for killing two Fairbanks men in 1976 during two robberies that were less than three months apart.
Authorities say he robbed a Shell station in Mountain View, a neighborhood on Anchorage’s northeast side, in January 2013.
Osborne’s convictions in the Fairbanks murders led to an appeal before the Alaska Supreme Court on the topic of spousal testimony.
Linda Kious, who was living with Osborne at the time, told police he admitted to killing John Dempe and John Ieppert in 1976.
On March 14, 1977, about a week before Osborne was to go on trial for killing Ieppert, Osborne and Kious married.
Spouses generally cannot testify against each other, but the trial judge invoked an exception and ordered Kious to testify against her new husband. She disappeared before the trial started March 23, but voluntarily showed up two days later. As she was about to testify, Osborne changed his plea to guilty on both the first-degree murder and armed robbery counts.
The second trial opened March 29, 1977, and a jury convicted Osborne of attempted robbery and first-degree murder of Dempe.
Osborne unsuccessfully appealed, in part because his wife was ordered to testify. Supreme Court justices, however, agreed with the trial court judge that the circumstances of the marriage suggested that its purpose was to prevent Kious from testifying.
Osborne was released on parole Oct. 20, 2012, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kaci Schroeder.
In the Jan. 13, 2013 Anchorage robbery, Osborne threatened to shoot a clerk unless he was given money.
The clerk handed over $438 and Osborne fled in the passenger side of a sport utility vehicle. The SUV and the driver were never identified, said Assistant District Attorney Katholyn Runnels.
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