A Conscience Cries Out : Crime: A man surrenders in an elderly woman’s murder, saying he was haunted for 17 years by her dying words. He may face the death penalty.

“Oh Lord,” the dying woman said. “I’m coming home.”

For 17 years--during which he served prison sentences for robbery, attempted robbery, receiving stolen property and parole violations--those last words haunted Julian Imperial.

Finally, stricken by what he described as an awakened conscience, Imperial walked into the Whittier police station in August and admitted his involvement in the beating death of 73-year-old Mary R. Stein.

He has been charged with first-degree murder while committing a burglary and could face the death penalty.

Sitting quietly in his cell and thumbing through a leather-covered Bible, the 38-year-old man, with his short salt-and-pepper hair, brown tortoise-shell glasses and soft voice, has an aura of middle-class respectability.

But a host of tattoos--including his gang nickname, “Crow,” on his left hand--hint at the darker side of his life.

Imperial was first arrested at age 13 for burglary, with subsequent arrests for auto theft, robbery and striking an off-duty police officer. He says he spent about three years in California Youth Authority facilities before reaching adulthood.

In a recent jail interview, Imperial said that on Oct. 4, 1977, when he was 21 years old, he and a friend--looking for easy money--decided to commit a burglary.

They chose the first-floor apartment of Mary Stein, a widow who lived alone and managed a 38-unit complex on Pickering Avenue in Whittier, just two doors from where Imperial lived with his family.

Imperial said that while he was searching another room, he heard a pounding noise in a darkened bedroom. He said he walked in to find his friend, whom he would not name, striking someone in the bed with a bed slat.

Imperial said he grabbed another board and struck the victim twice.

Then he heard her dying words.

Shaken by what had happened, Imperial said, he left the apartment with his friend and a few minutes later placed an anonymous call to alert police to the crime.

Police have confirmed they received such a call.

Imperial said that over the next three days, he and his friend spent the $500 taken from the apartment on liquor and drugs.

Police said Imperial was a suspect at the time, but he denied any involvement and there was no hard evidence, such as fingerprints, linking him to the crime. Detectives investigated the case for three months, then set it aside, said Whittier Police Sgt. Dan Petropulos.

Imperial says that less than a year after the killing, he became a Christian.

“I wanted forgiveness for what I had done,” he said.

But he was not ready to change his lifestyle.

In 1979, he was sentenced to two years in prison for the attempted robbery of a Denny’s restaurant. In 1984, he was sentenced to eight years for robbing a Downey liquor store. Four years later he was released, but parole violations put him back in prison three times. In 1991, he was sentenced to another year in prison for receiving a stolen television set and VCR.

Then finally, last summer, “I really got right with God,” Imperial said.

He said he was staying at a Salvation Army shelter in Whittier at the time. After an evening service he approached the shelter’s director, Barry Shrum, and sought advice about turning himself in.

Shrum accompanied Imperial to the police station the following day. After giving a statement for more than an hour, Imperial was arrested on suspicion of murder. His preliminary hearing is set for Oct. 26 in Whittier Municipal Court. Deputy Dist. Atty. Dinko Bozanich said the investigation of Imperial’s alleged accomplice--a man currently in state prison--is continuing. Authorities have refused to identify the man.

On his attorney’s advice, Imperial pleaded not guilty in court. But in his recent jailhouse interview he described his involvement in Stein’s death.

“I’m tired of running from the Lord,” he said.