A man serving life behind bars for the murder of a PC World editor has died in a prison fight that is being investigated as a homicide, state corrections officials said.
Forty-year-old Darryl W. Hudson died Friday, a day after he fought with five other prisoners at California State Prison, Sacramento in Folsom, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Hudson was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 2009 in the killing of PC World editor Rex Farrance and pistol-whipping of his wife during a home-invasion robbery in Pittsburg.
Farrance, a senior technical editor at PC World magazine in San Francisco, was home with his wife, Lenore van Tosh-Farrance, on Jan. 9, 2007, when a group of masked men kicked in the front door, Contra Costa County prosecutor Harold Jewett said during the trial.
“Where’s the money, bitch,” one of the men asked Tosh-Farrance and pistol-whipped her. Jewett said one of the men, believed to be Hudson, shot Farrance once in the chest from three or four feet away.
The men took Farrance’s gun safe, some marijuana and a laptop computer. Jewett said the house was most likely targeted because Farrance and his son were growing marijuana in the attic.
Hudson was sentenced to life for first-degree murder and first-degree robbery, with enhancements for using a firearm, and for assault with a firearm.
A Contra Costa County Superior Court judge declared a mistrial for Hudson’s co-defendant, Montrell Hall, after the jury said it was hopelessly deadlocked and unable to reach a verdict.
Prison officials said Hudson began fighting with Darryn W. Mayberry and four other prisoners in a dayroom about 2:55 p.m. Thursday. Mayberry allegedly struck Hudson several times, causing him to lose consciousness, the corrections department said.
Hudson was taken by ambulance to an outside medical facility where he was pronounced dead Friday night. No staff or additional incarcerated individuals were injured.
In 2021, while an inmate, Hudson was sentenced by a Kern County court to seven years for battery on a non-prisoner with an enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury, according to the corrections department.
Mayberry and four other inmates have been placed in restricted housing pending an investigation by the Sacramento prison’s Investigative Services Unit and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.
Mayberry, 30, has been serving 10 years for second-degree robbery as a second striker with enhancements for having been convicted of prior felonies.
California State Prison, Sacramento is a high-security facility in Folsom that houses about 1,990 incarcerated people, the corrections department said.
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