{"id":310833,"date":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/310833\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","slug":"yokuts-valley-serial-killer-sentenced-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/310833\/","title":{"rendered":"Yokuts Valley Serial Killer Sentenced to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FRESNO, CA (KMJ)\u00a0 A convicted triple killer was sentenced Friday in a Fresno courtroom.<\/p>\n<p>Buford King pleaded guilty to murdering three men in Yokuts Valley between 2011 and 2016 \u2014 Donnie Lee, Aleksey Shelest, and Alberto Contreras.<\/p>\n<p>During victim impact statements, Lee\u2019s daughter told the court King was an \u201cevil man,\u201d saying the pain and trauma will never fully go away.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors described the crimes as a nightmare \u2014 saying King used one victim\u2019s body for target practice and buried the bodies in holes on rural properties.<\/p>\n<p>King was sentenced to 50-years-to-life without the possibility of parole.<\/p>\n<p>Defense attorneys cited King\u2019s military service and claimed severe PTSD, while prosecutors rejected assertions that the killings were acts of vigilantism.<\/p>\n<p>As part of a plea deal, King gave up his right to appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, CA (KMJ)\u00a0 A convicted triple killer was sentenced Friday in a Fresno courtroom. Buford King pleaded guilty&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-310833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}