Inset: Daniel Graham (KGET/YouTube). Background: The Superior Mobile Home Park where Graham admittedly killed a woman in Oildale, Calif. (Google Maps).
A California man recently arrested for murdering a woman has since admitted to the crime on camera – but he says that slaying was just the final chapter in his long story of violence and pain.
On Aug. 9, investigators found the body of Roxana Jo Kelly, 62, in the burned-out wreckage of a residence that had been set alight the night before at Superior Mobile Home Park on State Road in Oildale, a census-designated place located a few miles north of Bakersfield.
On Aug. 18, Daniel Graham, 41, and Misha Allen, 42, were arrested and charged with murder in the first degree over the incident.
This week, Graham gave a jailhouse interview to Bakersfield-based NBC affiliate KGET in which he confessed to the specific crime – while comparing and contrasting Kelly”s death to prior purported killings.
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“I feel sorry about what happened to Roxanne but you know, it is what it is,” Graham told KGET reporter Connor Dore. “I can be your best friend. I can be your worst nightmare.”
The defendant reportedly went on to explain the day in question. Kelly owed him a large unpaid debt, Graham said. A confrontation led to a refusal to pay up, he added. Then, the woman called him several slurs, the admitted killer said. After that, Graham said he lost control.
“I just – I choked her out,” Graham said. “I ran behind her and put her in a headlock and I just blacked out. That happens to me when I get angry, and that’s the only female I’ve ever got with like that and took her life.”
But, the defendant continued, elaborating on the caveat about gender, the violence that took Kelly’s life was also atypical for him.
“All my other victims have been males,” Graham said.
While declining to offer much in the way of specifics – including names of the putative victims – Graham said he has killed a total of six people. Three victims have been in the Golden State, he told the TV station. Three victims are from his hometown of Gallup, New Mexico – a small city located roughly 140 miles west of Albuquerque.
“I haven’t seen myself as a human being in a long time,” Graham told KGET. “Since I was 17-years-old. Since I took my first life.”
The defendant said that he learned a man was molesting a child in his family – so he simply took matters into his own hands.
“I kept my enemy close and invited him to go to a lake with me and went out, had some beers, and went to take a piss, walked up behind him and popped him,” Graham calmly explained.
Throughout the interview with Dore, the defendant repeatedly referred to himself as a “monster” or “beast,” according to KGET.
Graham, for his part, said the purpose of the interview was to exonerate Allen. He reportedly insisted she was not there on the night of the fire – but said another, unidentified, woman was with him.
The reporter also had his subject reflect on life and death.
“Do you feel guilty for all the people you’ve killed?” Dore asked.
Graham paused for a moment before answering: “A couple, yeah. But a couple – not gonna lose any sleep over it.”
Later in the interview, Dore asked Graham what he thought his own sentence should be, if he could choose.
Again Graham paused then said, eyes downcast: “I don’t know. If it were up to me, I’d probably get rid of me.”
At one point, Graham was asked if he might do some good by naming the other victims so that their families could have some knowledge about how their son, brother, or husband died.
The killer demurred.
“Probably,” Graham said. “But I stopped being good a long time ago.”
