Stanwood Ellkus was sentenced to prison for killing a urologist he claimed botched his surgery, leaving him with erectile dysfunction. (OCSD)
A retired California barber was sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 10 years Friday for the 2013 murder of a doctor who allegedly botched a surgery leaving the man with erectile dysfunction.
Stanwood Elkus, 79, was found guilty on Aug. 21 of first-degree murder in the shooting death of urologist Ronald Gilbert, the Los Angeles Times reported. His sentence does not allow for the possibility of parole.
Elkus executed his plan using a false name, Allen Gold, and made an appointment with the Newport Beach doctor, prosecutors said. When Elkus walked into the exam room he shot the 52-year-old Gilbert 10 times.
After Elkus shot the father of two, he told a nurse: “I’m insane, call the police,” The Washington Post reported.
Prosecutors argued Elkus shot the doctor because he was angry over a “botched surgery” Gilbert performed on him in 1992 that left him with erectile dysfunction. The medical issue led to a decreased sex drive and caused a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, whom he planned to marry, prosecutors said.
Later, Elkus was told he was misdiagnosed and did not need the initial procedure.
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“Mr. Elkus began to blame all of his problems on this procedure,” prosecutor Matt Murphy said. “Whatever went wrong in his life he’d blame on the procedure. He obsessed over this.”
Elkus pleaded not guilty, claiming insanity. But jurors believed he was rational at the time of the slaying.
Gilbert’s friends and family called Elkus “evil” and “a foolish coward” before he was sentenced.
“There could be no punishment as great as the hate he has in his heart,” said Julie Harold Carter, a friend of Elkus'. “He’ll go to his grave knowing that he is reviled.”
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“The world was robbed of a model citizen...our children were robbed of an amazing father,” Gilbert’s wife said Friday.
The Los Angeles Times reported Elkus took off his hearing aid headphones halfway through the testimony of the doctor’s friends and family but fastened them back on to hear his sentencing.
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