Murder trial of convicted killer gets underway

Stephanie Sommers, murdered in Silver Lake in 1980.
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The trial of a convicted killer now accused of murdering former Newhall resident Stephanie Sommers four decades ago is underway.

Harold Parkinson, 60, appeared Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Ricardo Santiago, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, said Wednesda that his “jury trial is in progress.”

Jury selection began Tuesday.

Parkinson is serving 15 years to life in Chuckawalla Valley State Prison for the 1981 shooting murder of Derek Eugene Perry.

On Aug. 30, 1980, shortly after she moved to the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles from Newhall, Sommers was murdered in her apartment on the 3500 block of Marathon Street.

Sommers had been beaten and stabbed, prosecutors for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release issued at the time of Parkinson’s arrest. 

She was 36 years old.

The case remained unsolved for more than three decades. Detectives arrested Parkinson on June 19, 2014.

Law enforcement officials say forensic evidence taken from the crime scene 34 years ago and processed just four years ago was linked to Parkinson.

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