Gville man pleads 'not guilty' to 1988 Calif. murder

The Gainesville man who was arrested in April and charged with a 1988 murder in Santa Maria, Calif., is no longer a “guest” of Hall County.

A sheriff’s office spokeswoman says Aloysius Winthrop James was picked up at the Hall County Jail Sunday morning by officers with the sheriff’s office in Santa Maria. James had been held there since his arrest April 16. Calif. murder suspect arrested in Gville (wgtjradio.com)

The district attorney in Santa Maria says James made his first court appearance there Monday afternoon where he was arraigned on charges of first-degree murder and murder during a rape.

He’s being held without bond and is due back in court July 30.

About the Author

Ken Stanford is Online News Editor for GLORY 97.5, a position he has held since August 2022.

Ken was born in Moultrie, Georgia, and says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 he wanted to be a “radio announcer.” That dream was realized when he was hired by Moultrie radio station WMTM in 1960 at the age of 15 as a weekend disc jockey. A 1963 graduate of Moultrie (now Colquitt County) High School, he has spent his whole career in Georgia working for stations in Atlanta, Marietta, and Gainesville – most recently as News Director for 40 years at WDUN in Gainesville. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Ken retired in 2011 but came out of retirement last year to help GLORY, on a part-time basis, beef-up its online news presence.

He is the recipient of many Associated Press awards and is a former judge of state and national Associated Press broadcast news contests. In 2005, he was presented with the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2019 was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.

He lives in Gainesville with his wife of 52 years, the former Sandra McKnight of Clio, Alabama, and they have one child, a daughter, Lisa, who lives in Cumming with her family.