SAN DIEGO — A man who killed a woman whose beaten and strangled body was found on a Scripps Ranch hillside more than 35 years ago was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in state prison.
Randall Oyler, 65, was convicted by a San Diego jury of first-degree murder in the killing of 47-year-old Margaret Orozco Jackson, whose body was discovered July 11, 1990, off Scripps Ranch Boulevard, where Scripps Ranch High School was later built.
Deputy District Attorney Chris Lindberg said a woman walking to work found a length of rope on the sidewalk that led down the hillside to Jackson’s body. The rope had been wrapped twice around the victim’s neck.
Oyler, who was 29 when Jackson was killed, was not identified as a suspect until decades later, when DNA testing linked him to genetic material found beneath Jackson’s fingernails and on other areas of her body. He was arrested in 2023.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Lindberg described the killing as an unprovoked and “brutal attack” in which Jackson was strangled for five to six minutes.
According to a probation report, Oyler claimed Jackson had stolen drugs from him. Lindberg said, however, that when Oyler was secretly recorded speaking with an undercover jail operative posing as an inmate, he made several incriminating statements about the killing but never mentioned any drug theft.
“While no one really knows if this is true, such a slight provocation is no excuse for such a cruel murder,” Lindberg wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Jurors heard recordings in which Oyler acknowledged that Jackson had scratched him. In another conversation, after the undercover operative asked whether he had “just left her there,” Oyler replied that he had “threw her down a hill.”
Jackson’s niece, Rebecca Cepeda, called Oyler “a monster” during the hearing.
“You took her life and for what? Now you’re going to spend, who knows, the rest of your life in prison, and for nothing,” Cepeda said.
Oyler did not address the court. His attorney, Kara Oien, said on his behalf that he wanted to apologize to Jackson’s family.
“He does want to say he is sorry and express his condolences to the family. He knows that doesn’t excuse anything, but does wish to say he is sorry,” Oien said.
Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser said there was “no doubt” that Oyler committed the murder and noted he had evaded justice for more than three decades.
“There used to be a saying that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ and to a large extent that’s true, but it’s not true today,” Fraser said.
