Killer of Debbie Dorian pleads guilty to 30-year-old Fresno rape and murder
A brutal murder case that went cold for about 25 years came to an abrupt end when the accused killer of Fresno State student Debbie Dorian pleaded guilty in court, the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Friday.
Nickey Stane, 58, made a surprise change of plea on Thursday to guilty of all 11 charges he was facing, including murder and multiple sex crimes, in a move that will spare him of a potential death sentence.
He was set to go to trial in January.
The prosecution and defense had been working out a deal over several weeks before Stane changed his plea to avoid the death penalty, according to his attorney, Jane Boulger.
“I thought that was going to be a gamble for him,” she said. “He also didn’t want to go to trial for the benefit of his family, for the benefit of the Dorian family and for the folks in Visalia as well.”
Boulger said a trial would have included disturbing crime scene and autopsy images, as well as distressing testimony from victims and their family.
Stane was arrested in 2019 after DNA evidence tied him to four sexual assaults in Visalia from 1999 to 2002, and the 1996 rape and murder of Dorian.
The 22-year-old Dorian was found inside her second-floor apartment in Fresno with her mouth, nose, ankles and wrists bound with heavy duty tape. She died by asphyxiation, according to a medical examiner.
She was supposed to be going on a trip with her father, who discovered her body when he went to the apartment looking for her.
The assaults between 1999 and 2002 in Visalia had several similar characteristics — young women accosted in the street by a man shrouded by a hood who forced them into a secluded area at gunpoint before forcibly sexually assaulting them.
One of the victims, identified as Jane Doe 1, testified in a preliminary hearing that she was assaulted at 19 as she made her way home from her job at a Visalia ice cream parlor. She said she continued to be haunted by the details of the attack.
“What exactly he did has been in my mind for 25 years,” she said while pausing to hold back her emotion. “The nightmares I’ve had for 25 years.”
Stane is set to be sentenced June 12.
