After six hours of deliberations, a Solano County Superior Court jury on Thursday found Gregory Grant Hobson, 64, of Fairfield, charged with killing his wife on Feb. 14, 2023, guilty of second-degree murder.
Shortly after filing into Department 25, the panel of six men and six women, responding to the court clerk’s questions, acquitted Hobson of first-degree murder, as initially charged, but not of the lesser crime, for the death of Anu Anand Hobson, 53, his wife of 28 years.
Judge Janice M. Williams, who presided over the four-week trial, then polled each juror, asking them, “Is that your verdict?”
All said, “Yes,” and Hobson, clad in his usual dark gray suit at the defense table, titled his head back as he listened to their responses.
The judge then ordered Hobson to return for a presentencing report and sentencing, including victim-impact statements, at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 22 in the Justice Center in Fairfield. He faces 15 years to life for the second-degree murder conviction.
After jurors filed out of the courtroom, Hobson looked exhausted and resigned to his fate as he walked out of the courtroom and returned to the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield, where he has been held without bail since his Feb. 16, 2023, arrest.
Jurors began their deliberations around noon Wednesday, and apparently hewed to a suggestion by Chief Deputy District Attorney Bruce Flynn, who, in his rebuttal statement, reminded the jury that Hobson burned his wife’s body on the evening of Feb. 14 in a rural Fresno County orchard and that he watched it burn for awhile, then fled southward on Interstate 5.
Immediately after making that statement, Flynn, a veteran prosecutor with decades of experience on his resume, then asked the jury to consider initially a verdict of second-degree murder, but then possibly also consider first-degree murder, an unlawful killing that is premeditated and deliberate, with malicious intent.
In his final argument, Chief Deputy Public Defender Oscar J. Bobrow urged jurors to find Hobson not guilty of murder, arguing the fatal confrontation stemmed from sudden provocation rather than premeditation.
He said there was no evidence that he wanted or intended to kill her. Additionally, Bobrow noted testimony from the Hobson children, Sara and Sean Hobson, indicated that Sara “never saw” her parents engage in violent physical behavior and that Sean “didn’t think his father was capable of such violence.”
But Flynn, in his rebuttal statements, said many actions by the defendant — who on Monday admitted on the witness stand that he was “responsible” for the death of his wife — were “calculated” and his testimony untrustworthy.
Afterward, Judge Janice M. Williams, who presided over the four-week trial in Department 25, issued final jury instructions and ordered the panel to begin deliberations.
Court testimony indicated Gregory and Anu got into a heated exchange on the morning of Feb. 14 and, somehow, she ended up on second-floor of her office in the home they shared on Americano Way in Fairfield. He testified that he had suspected his wife of poisoning him and of having an extra-marital affair.
He straddled her twice while she was on the floor, and the second time, while face up, blood coming form her mouth, she fell silent and died. Hobson then placed her body in a sleeping bag, loaded it into his silver Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, using a portable hydraulic lift purchased that day. He then drove the truck on eastbound I-80, then southward to Fresno County, where he poured gasoline on the sleeping bag and lighted it.
A Coroner’s autopsy report indicated that the cause of Anu’s death could not be determined.
Cellphone data presented in court, besides showing his travels from Fairfield to Fresno County, also indicated drove around Southern California for a time on Feb. 15, then decided to return to Fairfield on Feb. 16, where Hobson, a former chemist for the Chevron Corp., was arrested, after Fairfield police officers received a “hit” from a license place-reading surveillance camera.
During his 35-minute rebuttal, Flynn recounted some of the many details of what Hobson did after killing Anu, from cleaning up blood evidence in the upstairs office and the garage to “making sure there was no evidence of a crime,” to the defendant’s admission that he moved the home’s surveillance cameras to make sure he could not be seen leaving the home in his pickup truck with Anu’s body in the back.
Flynn also recalled testimony that Hobson threw his and Anu’s cellphone in the river on the way down Interstate 5 toward Fresno County, and the crime analyst’s testimony about “cell mapping” that showed Hobson’s whereabouts as he traveled.
Flynn pointedly asked, “Why didn’t he call 911?”
“He didn’t want anyone coming to the house,” he said, adding that, after Anu’s death, Hobson searched online about ways to lift his wife’s body from the garage floor into the back of his pickup truck.