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A county court in California is weighing whether to release Adrian Jerry Gonzalez, who as a teenager brutally murdered his 8-year-old neighbor Madyson “Maddy” Middleton.
Gonzalez, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to the 2015 killing, is currently being held at a youth prison in Sonoma County but will age out of the juvenile system later this year when he turns 25.
Gonzalez was 15 when as Middleton’s neighbor at the Tannery Arts Center apartment complex in Santa Cruz, he lured the 8-year-old to his apartment with an offer of ice cream, according to prosecutors.
Once inside, Gonzalez grabbed the child by the throat, duct-taped her mouth, and choked her. Thinking she was dead, he sexually assaulted her and then put her body in a trash can at the apartment complex.
“Adrian decided to kill Madyson to prevent her from reporting his behavior to their mothers, who were friends,” Santa Cruz County Chief Deputy District Attorney Tara George said in court this week, according to the San Jose Mercury News. “Adrian choked Madyson for about 15 to 30 minutes, until she was blue.”
The killing shocked Santa Cruz, a quaint beach town on California’s Central Coast.
“We’re just devastated. These are two of our kids, and one is dead and one has been taken away,” one resident told The Los Angeles Times. “This is the most horrible thing you can imagine.”
The DA’s office, as well as the Santa Cruz County Probation Department, oppose Gonzalez’s release.
The prosecutor’s office challenged Gonzalez’s release in May.
The Santa Cruz County Superior Court is hearing testimony through the end of the month and then will decide whether the county has probable cause to seek the delay. If the court rules for the prosecutors, the matter will then move to a jury trial.
Gonzalez was charged as an adult, but before his trial, California passed SB 1391 in 2019, which bars the state from prosecuting 14 and 15-year-olds as adult offenders, prompting the case to move to juvenile court.
State policy again impacted Gonzalez’s fate in 2023, when the state closed its separate juvenile justice prison system and ordered young offenders back to the counties where they were charged.
Santa Cruz, lacking adequate facilities, sent the youth to Sonoma County.
In court, Ashley Mowrey, a clinical forensic psychologist at the San Francisco Forensic Institute, testified that Gonzalez scored above average on one sexual risk assessment test, and as a moderate risk on another, but didn’t show signs of pedophilia or sexual sadism, according to Lookout Santa Cruz.
