Crime Beat (5 page)
Authors: Michael Connelly
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Non-fiction, #Science, #Fiction:Detective, #History
LAPD foreign prosecution unit officers said they know of no instance in which a witness in a Los Angeles murder case, detectives included, went to Mexico to testify. Instead, Mexican prosecutors rely upon the witness accounts and affidavits supplied by police.
Attorneys Disturbed
That the defendants thus are denied the opportunity to face their accusers, a cornerstone of the U.S. justice system, is disturbing to some attorneys.
“No one says a criminal should go unpunished,” said Jaime Cervantes, a former president of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. in Los Angeles. “But this country has a long-developed concept of how someone is proven guilty of a crime and there is something fundamentally unfair about going to another country to convict and punish them.”
Peter Shey, chairman of the international law committee of the local National Lawyers Guild, also questioned the Mexican prosecutions.
“Basic notions of fundamental fairness are either nonexistent or rarely employed in their justice system,” Shey said. “If people are required to stand trial in Mexico for crimes in the United States, they would be placed at a significant disadvantage.”
‘A Jaundiced Eye’
Lt. Ross, the unit’s supervisor, said he believes that such concerns are unfounded.
“I think a lot of people have tended to view Mexican justice with a jaundiced eye,” he said. “But that is an American perception and it is a misconception. Mexico has a very legitimate legal system that operates very well.”
Ross and his fellow officers contend that a murder suspect who flees to avoid prosecution in Los Angeles is accepting the justice system of the country he runs to.
“You have to accept the risks that you have incurred by fleeing,” Moya said.
Much like the LAPD unit, the California attorney general’s office has developed specialists in bringing cases to Mexico. The state’s chief expert is Ruben R. Landa, a special agent with the attorney general’s office in San Diego, who took his department’s first murder case to Mexico in 1980.
70 Murder Cases Brought
Since then, Landa has helped various California police departments bring 70 murder cases to Mexico, 14 so far in 1987, more than in any previous year. About 20 of the cases have worked their way through Mexican courts, he said, all resulting in convictions, although one of those was thrown out on appeal.
“Now it’s sort of snowballing,” he said. “More and more detectives are finding out that this is a way to go with their cases.”
One benefit for U.S. authorities is financial. Mexico pays for prosecuting the cases, and police officials estimate that it costs American taxpayers less than $1,000 in travel and other expenses to bring a case there, an amount that pales in comparison to the costs of jailing, prosecuting and defending a murder suspect in Los Angeles.
“You are probably talking about saving thousands of dollars on every case,” Ross said.
‘Two-Way Street’
But Angel Saad, the Baja attorney general, said the arrangement does not just help the U.S. agencies.
“It is a two-way street with positive results for both countries,” he said. “For Mexico, it signifies its willingness to punish its citizens that commit crimes in foreign countries.”
A more tangible way the relationship pays off for Mexico, police say, is when the foreign prosecution unit, acting on tips from Mexican police, locates Mexicans in Los Angeles who are suspected of crimes in their own country. So far this year, 13 such suspects have been arrested by immigration authorities in Los Angeles as illegal aliens and returned to Mexico with the help of the unit. Because they are illegal aliens, they can be shipped back without lengthy extradition proceedings.
Other Kinds of Cases
Although most of its time has been spent on murder cases in Mexico, the foreign prosecution unit has been used on occasion in child abuse, robbery and auto theft investigations. And its officers have pursued murder cases in other countries where laws allow prosecution of foreign crimes. Two cases have been brought in El Salvador, one in France and one investigation is pending in Honduras.
The crimes that lead the officers across the border are quite varied, involving both Mexican and American victims.
Lorraine Kiefer, 70, was a well-liked Van Nuys widow and retired real-estate broker who worked without pay at an American Cancer Society thrift shop. In 1980, she had married Gilberto Flores, a longtime acquaintance who was 38 years her junior. Four years later, police said, Flores hired a second man, Andreas Hernandez Santiago, to kill her for $5,000.
Filed in Mexico
After detectives unraveled the Oct. 2, 1984, killing, the case was filed in Mexico, where the two men, both Mexican nationals, had fled. Santiago was arrested in Oaxaca and later convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Flores is still being sought.
In one of the first cases handled by the unit in 1985, Juan Francisco Rocha, 36, was arrested in Monterrey, Mexico, for the killing in Hollywood of his girlfriend, Brenda Joyce Abbud, a decade earlier. She had been doused with paint thinner and set on fire.
“Many of the cases have strong impacts on their communities,” Zorrilla said.
The Dec. 8, 1980, killing of Lisa Ann Rosales was such a case, prompting the Los Angeles City Council to offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. A local high school started a college scholarship in Lisa’s name and an elementary school named a garden after her.
There were few solid leads until a woman called police anonymously in 1985, saying her conscience bothered her and that she wanted them to know that Castro, who worked as a maintenance man at the Rosales home, was the killer. That lead gave the case a new focus, and police said more evidence was uncovered against Castro.
Castro, who had returned to Mexico weeks after the killing, confessed shortly after he was arrested in Mexicali in 1986, according to police in both countries.
MURDER SUSPECT SEEKS TO CLEAR NAME WITH LAWSUITS
Mary Kellel-Sophiea says homicide investigators wrongfully tried to pin her husband’s slaying on her. The detectives still believe she’s guilty.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
September 15, 1991
M
ARY KELLEL-SOPHIEA
says she is on trial for murder. But it was her choice.
For more than two months last year, she faced a possible death sentence after being charged with the murder of her estranged husband. On Jan. 31, 1990, Gregory Sophiea was stabbed to death in his bed in the Shadow Hills home that the couple had shared for five years.
But then a prosecutor dropped the charges against her, telling a judge he did not have enough evidence to proceed with the case in court.
A year and a half later, the additional evidence has not been found. But Kellel-Sophiea is back in court. She is suing her accusers, charging two Los Angeles police detectives with violating her rights by arresting her without cause and conspiring to frame her with a murder she did not commit.
The two-week-old civil trial before a jury in U.S. District Court has unfolded much like that of a murder trial.
Detectives testified about their investigation and identified an 18-year-old transient who has been convicted of the murder and who they believe conspired with Kellel-Sophiea to kill her husband. A medical examiner discussed the details of the autopsy. A next-door neighbor told the jury about finding the dead man and the blood-spattered butcher knife.
Though no death sentence rides on the jury’s verdict, the 10-member panel will, in effect, be asked to cast judgment on Kellel-Sophiea, deciding whether she has been wrongfully pursued by two obsessed investigators or possibly is a killer who has not only gotten away with her crime but is now seeking monetary damages from her pursuers.
Kellel-Sophiea, 40, now lives in Long Beach. She is seeking unspecified damages from Detectives Woodrow Parks and Gary Milligan. She believes the jury will exonerate her by finding that the detectives wrongfully arrested her. She said such a verdict will finally help end the suspicion that surrounds her.
“If I was guilty, why wouldn’t I just go on with my life and thank God I had gotten away with it?” she asked in an interview last week. “Why would I go through with this trial? It’s like a murder trial. If I was guilty, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
The lawsuit focuses on what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 31 at the Sophiea family’s Orcas Avenue house and whether detectives assigned to the case correctly and honestly interpreted the evidence left by a killer. Kellel-Sophiea claims they did not.
“They threw this woman on a freight train to hell, and they still are trying to shovel coal on the fire,” said Ken Clark, one of her attorneys.
According to testimony at the trial, Gregory Sophiea and his wife argued on the last night of his life.
The couple had separated after 10 years of marriage but had agreed to meet at the house they owned—and where Gregory, a salesman and caterer, was staying—to discuss its sale.
Death Followed Quarrel
Kellel-Sophiea, a former advertising executive, testified that the couple argued over furniture she needed for her new apartment in Long Beach, and related financial matters.
Later, Gregory went to sleep in the master bedroom while his wife slept in another bedroom and their 6-year-old daughter, Kristen, slept in a third room.
In a tape-recorded interview with police on the day of the murder, Kellel-Sophiea said she was awakened shortly after 3 a.m. by a noise and heard a gurgling sound. Knowing her husband was asthmatic, she rushed to his bedroom and saw him lying on his back on the water bed gasping for breath.
She said she saw blood on the sheets and assumed he had injured himself—something that had occurred once before during a morning asthma attack. She did not notice the stab wounds on her husband’s chest and neck, she told the detectives.
Though there was a phone on the nightstand Kellel-Sophiea ran to another phone in the house, dialed 911 to report her husband could not breathe and then ran to a next-door neighbor’s house for help. While the neighbor, Larry Rotoli, went into the bedroom to try to aid Sophiea, Kellel-Sophiea remained at the front of the house to direct paramedics inside.
When the paramedics arrived moments later, they found Gregory Sophiea dead, with seven stab wounds in the upper body.
Kellel-Sophiea was taken to the Foothill Division police station to await questioning while several detectives gathered at the scene of the crime. Among them were Parks, who had eight years’ experience as a homicide detective, and Milligan, who was working his first case as homicide detective trainee. They would be the lead detectives assigned to the case.
Among the pieces of evidence awaiting the detectives was a bloody butcher knife on the bedroom floor. They found the window in one of the bathrooms open to the backyard and an undamaged screen leaning on an outside wall. There was dirt on the toilet seat and the bathroom floor.
Bloodstains were found in other parts of the house, and there were bloody fingerprints on a backyard fence. They also found pry marks on the outside of a rear door.
On the surface, evidence seemed to indicate that someone had broken into the house through the bathroom window, and escaped through the window and over the fence after stabbing Sophiea. But the detectives, after conducting a routine preliminary investigation, came to a different conclusion.
No Footprints
Parks and Milligan testified that they found no footprints in the dirt below the bathroom window. The detectives determined the window screen could not have been removed from the outside without being damaged. And using an oblique lighting technique, they determined that dust on the stone pathway that led to the bathroom window had not been disturbed—indicating no one had walked there that morning.
They also found chemical traces of what could have been blood in two sinks and a bathtub in the house.
The detectives developed the theory that the break-in had been staged to throw the investigation off course.
“We were all in unanimous agreement that this was not a burglary,” Milligan testified last week. “I don’t believe anyone went in or out of that window.”
Burglary eliminated, their suspicions turned to the widow. The detectives testified it was their opinion that the victim had been dead at least an hour before Kellel-Sophiea said she saw him struggling for breath and dialed 911. Also, a chemical test of her hands revealed traces of blood, though she had said she did not remember touching her husband before seeking help. Most of all, it was her story that did not ring true, the detectives said.
“This man with seven holes in his body was having an asthma attack?” Milligan testified. “What she told us was incredible. I wondered . . . why anyone would look at this individual and say he had an asthma attack.”
The two detectives questioned Kellel-Sophiea at the Foothill station for two hours, but she did not change her original story, according to a transcript of the interview, which was played for jurors. Instead, she became hysterical when told her husband had died of stab wounds, not an asthma attack, and that she was under arrest:
Parks: “You murdered the guy.”
Kellel-Sophiea: “Oh, come on. I don’t understand any of this. . . . What do you mean? I don’t even know what you are talking about. . . .”
Parks: “Well, let me tell you real quick. . . . I’m talking about you going to jail . . . killing your husband.”
Kellel-Sophiea: “I never . . . I’m no killer. I don’t have that in me. . . . I don’t believe this.”
Parks: “Well, believe it.”
Kellel-Sophiea: “. . . I didn’t do anything wrong. Why would I? This has got to be a dream.”
Kellel-Sophiea was jailed and was arraigned two days later on murder charges in San Fernando Municipal Court. She pleaded not guilty.
Investigation of the case continued, and in mid-February, the investigators learned that the bloody fingerprints on the fence did not belong to Kellel-Sophiea as they had expected. Instead, they belonged to an 18-year-old drug abuser and former psychiatric patient named Tony Moore.
On Feb. 20, 1990, the detectives arrested Moore, and during a six-hour interrogation, Moore gave a variety of versions of what happened Jan. 31, alternately implicating himself and Kellel-Sophiea as the killer.
David Romley, another of Kellel-Sophiea’s attorneys, said a tape recording of the Moore interrogation is a key part of his client’s case against the detectives. He said the tape shows the detectives fell into “tunnel investigation” and “suspect of convenience” syndromes by steering Moore toward their set belief that the burglary was staged and that Kellel-Sophiea was involved.
“They just tried to mold everything into their conclusion,” Romley said.
According to a transcript of the taped interrogation, Moore initially denied ever being in the Sophiea house, but when told that his bloody fingerprints were found at the scene, he replied, “OK, you got me.”
Moore then told the two detectives step by step how he had broken into the house through a bathroom window and took a butcher knife from the kitchen. He said he stabbed Sophiea when the man awoke while Moore was in his bedroom looking for items to steal.
But the detectives told Moore he was lying, and he changed his story to include Kellel-Sophiea as the killer. He said she paid him $600 to kill her husband, but he said she did it herself when he was unable to go through with it. Moore said he and Kellel-Sophiea then staged the break-in to make it appear that a burglar had killed Sophiea.
Changing Stories
Moore changed his story two more times as the interrogation continued, going back to admitting that he had killed Sophiea while burglarizing the house, then once again saying Kellel-Sophiea was the killer, this time adding that he was romantically involved with her.
Kellel-Sophiea branded as preposterous Moore’s accusations that she was involved with him or the killing. Romley said the detectives led Moore “down the garden path” by feeding him information about Kellel-Sophiea and the evidence during the early stage of the interrogation, which allowed him to later concoct her involvement in the killing.
Romley said he intends to play the tape for the jury this week, though Assistant City Atty. Honey A. Lewis, who is defending the two detectives, has opposed allowing jurors to hear it. Lewis, Parks and Milligan declined to discuss the case before completion of the trial.
Following Moore’s arrest, Kellel-Sophiea was rearraigned on murder charges, this time including an allegation of murder for financial gain, which carries a possible death penalty. The financial gain allegation was added because police and prosecutors believed Kellel-Sophiea was motivated to kill her husband to collect insurance money and to avoid having to share the proceeds from the sale of the house.
Moore later pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. But detectives were unable to find evidence substantiating Moore’s claims about Kellel-Sophiea’s involvement, and charges against her were dropped on April 5, 1990, the day a preliminary hearing was set to begin.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig R. Richman testified during the federal trial last week that the charges could be reinstated if additional evidence against Kellel-Sophiea is ever found. He also said he has seen no evidence that dissuades him from his belief that the burglary at the Sophiea house was staged.
Parks and Milligan also are unswayed in their suspicions of the widow. Both have testified that they still believe she was involved in her husband’s slaying.
“I think she and Tony Moore entered into a conspiracy,” Milligan said.
Kellel-Sophiea’s attorneys have sought to bolster her innocence with a variety of testimony and witnesses.
Though the detectives said Sophiea was dead an hour before his wife sought help, Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Irwin Goldin, who conducted the Sophiea autopsy, testified that it was impossible to pinpoint the time of death within the two hours before paramedics arrived. Two private experts in criminology have testified that the bathroom screen can easily be removed from outside the house, contrary to the detectives’ view.
Wounds Unnoticed
Rotoli, the neighbor whom Kellel-Sophiea went to for help that night, testified that, although he spent two minutes attempting to render help to Sophiea, he also did not notice any stab wounds on the man’s body—largely because the victim’s chest was thickly covered with hair.
Rotoli also said he washed blood off his hands in the kitchen sink. And a forensic expert testified that tests for trace amounts of blood found in the other sink and bathtub and on Kellel-Sophiea’s hands could be inaccurate or could be identifying blood unrelated to the slaying.
Kellel-Sophiea’s attorneys charge that all of their information was available to the detectives immediately after the slaying but that they bungled the case by focusing too soon on Kellel-Sophiea. And now, having accused her, they refuse to back down.
“Before they even got out to the crime scene they were thinking the wife did it,” Romley said. “Then they saw the burglary evidence, and they didn’t want to look at it. They had a predetermined mind-set. They already had her convicted.”
Kellel-Sophiea said she remains fearful that she could lose her freedom again.
“I don’t know if they will ever stop,” she said of Parks and Milligan. “That’s why I am doing this. I want to stop them from doing this to anyone else.”
WIFE STILL A SUSPECT IN HUSBAND’S DEATH AFTER LOSING SUIT
September 26, 1991
A police investigation of Mary Kellel-Sophiea as a suspect in the stabbing death of her husband continued Wednesday, a day after two detectives were cleared of wrongdoing in her lawsuit charging they had falsely arrested and conspired to frame her.
