The State - News from Dec. 25, 1985

Electronics technician Barry Wayne McNamara, who claimed voices on television instructed him to kill his parents, sister and 4-year-old niece Jan. 5, was ruled sane by a Santa Barbara Superior Court jury. McNamara, 37, could face death in the gas chamber as a result. Judge Patrick McMahon scheduled the penalty phase of the trial to begin Monday. If he had been found insane, McNamara could have been sent to a mental institution for life. The same jury had convicted McNamara Dec. 12 of murdering parents Elger and Florence McNamara, both 57, sister Diane McNamara Trenner, 31, and her daughter, Kellin Trenner, 4, at the family’s hillside ranch with a rifle. The sanity finding came despite testimony by two psychiatrists that McNamara was insane when he killed his father, sister and niece with a rifle and crushed his mother’s skull with a flagstone.