‘Pretend suicide’ blamed in train crash

A Compton man willfully caused a deadly commuter train wreck three years ago in an extreme, but apparently successful, attempt to regain the affections of his estranged wife, prosecutors said Monday.

“He needed to do something big to get her attention,” prosecutor Cathryn Brougham said during opening statements in the trial of Juan Manuel Alvarez, who on Jan. 26, 2005, parked his vehicle over railway tracks and fled minutes before it was hit by an oncoming Metrolink train.

The prosecution accused Alvarez of conducting a “pretend suicide” similar to several such acts he had allegedly committed in the past.

“He would use these pretend suicide attempts throughout his life in order to get attention, sympathy and pity,” Brougham said.

Alvarez was hooked on meth, suffered delusions and kept accusing his wife, Carmelita, of having an affair, the prosecutor said. He became increasingly obsessive and threatened to kill her. By October 2004, Carmelita had kicked him out. When he continued to hound her, she got a restraining order.

“The defendant chose the path of destruction,” Brougham said. But “instead of deciding to kill his wife, he decided to murder 11 strangers.”

Prosecutors said Alvarez’s ploy succeeded in winning back his wife.

When Alvarez was charged with murder and jailed, his wife withdrew the restraining order and began to visit him, the prosecutor said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Monaghan, who shared the prosecution’s opening statements, said evidence would show that Alvarez intentionally left his SUV on the tracks near Glendale, doused it with gasoline and “used Metrolink as a match to light his vehicle on fire.”

Monaghan showed the jury head shots of those who died in the wreck; then photos of their mangled and burned bodies after the crash.

Henry Romero buried his head in his hands and tears welled up in his eyes as the photo of his uncle Leonardo Romero flashed on the screen.

“I relived the disaster, and seeing the picture like that . . . took me off guard,” said Romero, who sat near his uncle Miguel Romero, Leonardo’s younger brother.

Todd Crawford McKeown, whose brother Scott Latimer McKeown was also killed in the crash, said Alvarez should pay for his crime.

“His actions that day are criminal . . . and set in motion a chain of events that killed my brother and 10 others, and injured 180-plus people,” McKeown said. “I think he needs to be held responsible for that. It’s not OK.”

But Alvarez’s defense attorney, Thomas W. Kielty, called the deaths “an accident.” He said his client never imagined his Jeep could cause a powerful train to derail or that anyone, other than himself, would die.

“Civil, moral responsibility does not equal criminal guilt,” the attorney said.

Kielty described Alvarez, who was born in East Los Angeles and spent his preteen years in Mexicali, as a depressed psychotic with a history of suicide attempts beginning at the age of 8 when he tried to hang himself.

Alvarez’s delusions about his wife having an affair became so intense that he believed another man was in bed at night with the couple, Kielty said. His family tried, but failed, to get him help. He viewed the restraining order as “a way to get him out of the way for his wife’s lover.”

Alvarez, who attended court in a cream suit and olive green shirt -- his once long locks now cropped -- looked straight ahead during most of the hearing.

If convicted of first-degree murder, he could face the death penalty.

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ann.simmons@latimes.com