LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A man sent to state prison for a 1990 homicide in Clearlake Park has been denied parole for the fifth time following a hearing this week.
On Wednesday, the California Board of Parole Hearings denied parole for convicted murderer Kevin Coy Iloff, 50, according to the Lake County District Attorney's Office.
Deputy District Attorney Alan Upton attended the lifer hearing at California State Prison in Corcoran on behalf of the District Attorney’s Office to argue against Iloff’s release.
Iloff pleaded guilty in December 1990 to the second degree murder of 28-year-old Thomas Conatser and the use of a knife, and was sentenced by Judge Robert L. Crone Jr. to 16 years to life on Dec. 21, 1990.
He originally was prosecuted by Andrew S. Blum – now a Lake County Superior Court judge – and was represented by Mitchell Hauptman.
Iloff’s minimum eligible parole date was March 14, 2004. Iloff has had four previous parole consideration hearings, the District Attorney's Office reported.
According to investigation reports, Iloff had been involved in a relationship with the mother of his two children, but they had been separated for a few days, in part because of Iloff’s chronic drug abuse.
On Sept. 22, 1990, the woman was spending the night with Conatser at a home on Fourth Street in Clearlake Park.
At the time of the murder, one of Conatser’s children was sleeping in the same bed as Conatser and the woman. Conatser’s other child and the woman’s two children were asleep in another room.
At 4 a.m., Iloff jimmied the lock to the door, entered the house and the bedroom, and stabbed Conatser under the left armpit while everyone was asleep.
After Iloff stabbed Conatser, he told the woman, “I stuck him, don’t call the cops,” and threatened to kill her, too. He then fled the scene and caught a ride back to Vallejo.
While an investigator from the Clearlake Police Department was at the murder scene with the woman, Iloff called the woman and told her that “if you give me up I’ll do you like I did him.”
A friend of Iloff told investigators that Iloff boasted that if the victim wasn’t dead that he would come back and finish him off.
Iloff told another person that he had grabbed the victim by the hair and said “Wake up. I want you to see who is going to kill you.”
Iloff then fled to Reno, Nev., where he was arrested five days later.
During Iloff’s time in prison he has had 22 disciplinary actions, including fighting, possession of alcohol, refusal to follow orders, assaulting other inmates, threatening a corrections officer and participating in a riot.
In 1999, he was convicted of attempted murder of another inmate while Iloff was incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison, according to Upton.
As a result of that conviction Iloff was sentenced to an additional and consecutive five-year prison term that he will have to serve if he is granted parole for the murder of Conatser, Upton reported.
At his initial parole hearing in 2003 Iloff got into a heated exchange with the parole commissioners and refused to attend the hearing. He has since had three other parole hearings scheduled.
At the parole hearing Wednesday, Conatser’s brother was present, as were Conatser’s two sons – who were asleep in the house at the time of the murder – to ask that Iloff's parole be denied.
Upton asked the Board of Prison Hearings commissioners to deny Iloff’s parole on the grounds that he still presented an unreasonable risk of danger to the public if released, and that although Iloff had begun to participate in prison rehabilitation programs, such participation was too recent to demonstrate a sincere reformation of character.
The Board of Prison Hearings commissioners agreed and issued a three-year denial of parole, Upton reported.
Upton said Iloff’s next parole hearing will be in 2019.
Man convicted of 1990 murder denied parole
- Lake County News reports
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