Man Sentenced to Death for 2001
Murders of La Habra Heights Couple

March 13, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Joe Scott, Director of Communications
Sandi Gibbons, Public Information Officer
Jane Robison, News Secretary
(213) 974-3525

LOS ANGELES – A 55-year-old man was sentenced to death today by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge for orchestrating the murders of an elderly La Habra Heights couple in 2001.

Judge Kathleen A. Kennedy described Theodore Churchill Shove, III, as “a true sociopath with absolutely no conscience,” said Deputy District Attorney David Walgren of Major Crimes Division. Walgren co-prosecuted the case with Deputy District Attorney Cathryn Brougham.

In October 2007, a Superior Court jury convicted Shove of one count each of burglary and receiving stolen property, three counts of extortion by means of a letter and two counts of murder. The jury also found true two special circumstance allegations – murder for financial gain and multiple murders. Jurors recommended the death penalty.

Prosecutors said the defendant wanted to take over a Paramount-based industrial salvage and supply business owned by the victims, Hubert and Elizabeth Souther. When the victims refused to sell the business, Shove paid co-defendant Lewis Edward Hardin, 35, to murder the Southers.

On the evening of Sept. 15, 2001, Hardin broke into the victims’ home and brutally beat them with a tire iron, while they lay in bed sleeping. After the murders, Shove began a complicated scheme to extort the business from the Southers’ children, who had inherited the company.

Co-defendant Hardin, who is charged with two counts of murder, will be sentenced in April. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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