A homicide case takes a back seat to a theft ring
Trial is delayed in a brutal killing: The suspects are federal witnesses. By Scott Glover Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2007
Officially, the slaying of 23-year-old Erick Mendoza is considered unsolved by the Huntington Park Police Department.
But that's not for lack of evidence.
Police believe they know who is responsible for the December 2000 killing, and they've known it for more than six years.
But the case has taken a back seat to a larger government interest: the successful prosecution of a gang of home invasion-style robbers, some of whom just happened to have been Los Angeles Police Department officers.
The ring leader, former LAPD Officer Ruben Palomares, and 12 other people have pleaded guilty and are serving sentences in federal prison, but two others have denied the charges and are scheduled to go on trial next month.
Palomares and two of his cohorts are expected to be the government's star witnesses in the case. But they also are suspects in Mendoza's stabbing death, according to several investigators who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the case is pending.
So prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office find themselves in the awkward position of seeking to shield the three men from the murder allegations despite compelling evidence that they committed the crime.
The prosecutors don't want their key witnesses portrayed as killers -- or perceived as liars, if they deny the allegations -- in front of the jury. Nor do they want defense attorneys to suggest that prosecutors are dragging their feet on the killing as part of an unwritten deal to secure the men's cooperation.
Prosecutors have filed court papers seeking to bar the accused officers' defense attorneys from mentioning or asking questions about the Mendoza case.
"To do so would only serve to besmirch the government's witnesses and cast them in a negative light," wrote Assistant U.S. Atty. Douglas M. Miller in a recent court filing. "They have never even been charged with [Mendoza's] murder, much less convicted."
A hearing on the matter by U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess is to continue Aug. 28.
What's strange about Miller's characterization is that neither he nor anyone else in law enforcement familiar with the case could have much doubt that Palomares, his cousins Gabriel and Oscar Loaiza, and Alvin Moon played some role in the assault on Mendoza.
The U.S. attorney's office had been considering charging Palomares and the others but decided it did not fit within the framework of the home-invasion robberies case, which was a federal civil rights prosecution based on the notion that the suspects were acting under color of authority when they committed the crimes. Because the slaying was seen as unrelated, it was referred to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.
There, it bounced from prosecutor to prosecutor before it was assigned to then-Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Andrew Chung in May 2006. Two months later, he left to become a Superior Court judge.
Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, said the Mendoza case remained open and was assigned to a prosecutor in the Major Crimes Unit. She hinted there would be more activity.
"Justice delayed is not always justice denied," she said.
The following account is based on a review of court documents and the Huntington Park Police Department's "murder book" of evidence as well as interviews with investigators and attorneys in the case:
'Let's go get him'
Shortly after 4 am. on Dec. 9, a beige BMW went screeching into the parking lot of Las Playas restaurant, a popular late-night hangout in Bell. Erick Mendoza was behind the wheel.
Mendoza had entered the United States illegally with his uncle when he was a teenager to find work and send money to his family in a remote and impoverished village in Mexico. When the uncle suddenly decided to return to Mexico, Mendoza was left behind and was taken in by a local family.
He attended Bell High School and earned a letter in wrestling. After leaving school, he landed a job at a tire store, where his skill as a salesman translated into a salary of about $3,000 month.
Along the way, though, Mendoza had begun using drugs and alcohol; as one girlfriend put it, he did "stupid things" when he was drunk.
The night he pulled into the lot at Las Playas, Mendoza had been drinking and snorting cocaine. He stumbled as he got out of his car and began staring at a group of men near a black SUV, a security guard at the restaurant later told police.
"Is there a problem?" Mendoza asked the men.
"Yeah, you're in our way. Move," the security guard, Glenn Quevedo, recalled one of the men near the SUV saying.
Quevedo said the man also pulled out a gun and pointed it at Mendoza.
"Should I break him?" the man asked Quevedo, referring to killing him.
Thinking he was about to witness a killing, and then be killed himself, Quevedo responded, "No, don't break him."
The guard said Mendoza got back in his car and tore out of the parking lot.
"Let's go get him," one of the men near the SUV said as they all piled into the vehicle and gave chase.
Quevedo called 911.
The trail goes cold
As she peered out the window of her second-story apartment, Magallanes Delgado first thought the liquid running down the driveway from her neighbor Mendoza's BMW was red paint. Then she saw a young man slouched, motionless, in the driver's seat, so she called police.
The liquid turned out be blood, and there was lots of it. It was coming from the dead body of a young man, later identified as Mendoza.
He had been stabbed in the face, neck, chest, back and thigh. Police didn't have much to go on. A canvas of the neighborhood turned up nothing. No one who knew Mendoza could think of any reason someone would want to kill him.
They found a receipt indicating Mendoza had been to a Jack in the Box in Bell some time before he died, so detectives checked with police there. They were told about the disturbance at Las Playas and the security guard's 911 call. The detectives interviewed Quevedo and showed him photos of Mendoza and his car, both of which he identified as having been involved in the ruckus a night earlier.
Detectives also seized videotapes from security cameras at the restaurant. But attempts to identify the assailants were futile. In April 2001, four months after Mendoza was killed, the trail went cold. The investigation was suspended.
Mayhem is recounted
After he was busted in a federal drug sting in San Diego in June 2001, Alvin Moon, 25, a panicked community college student, couldn't confess fast enough. Within hours of being arrested, Moon admitted involvement in buying 10 kilos of cocaine from undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
But that wasn't all.
As stunned federal investigators listened, Moon spun an outrageous tale about a corrupt Los Angeles cop running a home-invasion style robbery ring in which he and more than a dozen other people ripped off drug dealers and dealt drug themselves. Skeptical at first, investigators have since proved Moon's allegation and obtained 12 convictions. But Moon wanted to talk about more than the robberies. There had been an incident at a restaurant in Bell, he said. Moon said he was there with Palomares and his cousins, the Loaizas, and another friend when they were confronted by someone in the parking lot.
As the man drove away, "there was an exchange of words," and Palomares told Moon, who was driving that night, "to go after him."
So Moon, Palomares, the Loaizas and Manuel Hernandez piled into Moon's black SUV -- a Toyota 4Runner -- and gave chase. They followed the car until it stopped in a driveway. Moon pulled in behind, blocking its exit.
Moon said Gabriel Loaiza got out and -- cop-like -- pointed a gun and metal Maglite flashlight at the driver.
Moon said Gabriel Loaiza began swinging the metal flashlight into the open door of the car, striking the man in the face. Palomares, a martial arts enthusiast, then delivered three karate-style blows to the victim's head and chest.
As Palomares walked back toward the SUV, Oscar Loaiza leaned into the man's car and continued the assault. At first, Moon said, he thought Oscar had just been hitting the man. But when he got back to the vehicle, he said he'd been stabbing him. His hands and knife were covered in blood. He used alcohol swabs from a first-aid kit Moon kept in the 4Runner to wipe them.
Moon said Gabriel Loaiza drove by the victim's residence the next morning and saw police officers and crime scene tape.
Occasionally, he said, Oscar Loaiza would brag, "I whacked that guy."
Unbeknown to Moon, another member of the crew arrested in San Diego that day, Jose Garcia, had given authorities "a similar version of what had occurred," but it was less detailed because Garcia hadn't been at Las Playas that night.
Case is in limbo
It didn't take long for police to match Moon's account with the killing of Erick Mendoza. Investigators' first call was to Bell police.
Officials there, aware of the unsolved murder in nearby Huntington Park, referred them to the detectives handling the case.
They interviewed Moon, along with Deputy Dist. Atty. Doug Sortino of the district attorney's Major Crimes Unit.
They seized Moon's SUV to look for traces of Mendoza's blood. They raided residences linked to the Loaizas, looking for the murder weapon.
They found and interviewed Hernandez, who, along with Moon, had stayed inside the 4Runner during the attack.
In the aftermath of the San Diego arrest, the FBI took control of the evidence gathered by Huntington Park police because the U.S. attorney's office "wanted to examine Mendoza's murder to see if it could be charged as part of a criminal enterprise."
When federal authorities decided some months later that it did not fit in their conspiracy case, the evidence was returned to the police. The case has been in limbo ever since, to the frustration of Mendoza's mother and friends.
The closest it has come to a courtroom is the dispute that has arisen in connection with the upcoming trial of William and Joseph Ferguson.
The brothers -- William, a former LAPD officer, and Joseph, a Long Beach officer -- are accused of being members of the robbery crew run by Palomares.
Their lawyers want to be able to question Palomares, Moon and Gabriel Loaiza about their alleged roles in the slaying and to probe whether they've been made any promises by the government.
Joseph Ferguson's attorney, Vicki Podberesky, said the issue wasn't whether the men are guilty of an uncharged crime but whether they may be motivated to help the government's case if they believe doing so may help them avoid being charged.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor, said she saw merit in the argument.
"The fact that nothing has happened to these guys for all these years at least creates the suggestion that the prosecution has been doing them a favor," Levenson said. "The defense ought to be able to at least explore that."