Neighbor Is Convicted of 4 Slayings

A 26-year-old neighbor was found guilty Tuesday of murdering four members of a south Whittier family after forensic evidence tied him to the crime scene.

The motive behind the massacre may never be known, prosecutors said. But shortly before Alfonso Ignacio Morales committed the crime, a daughter in the family had spurned his romantic overtures, and Morales returned to their house with a knife, they said.

Victims Miguel Ruiz; his wife, Maritza Trejo; their 8-year-old daughter, Jasmine; and Ruiz’s grandmother, Ana Martinez, were known as part of a quiet, hard-working family. Their house was ransacked and the throats of Ruiz and Martinez were slit. Trejo was stabbed at least 30 times. Jasmine was sexually assaulted and drowned in a bathtub.

“There was blood in almost every room in the house,” Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Alva Lin said.

Morales had been on good terms with the family until shortly before the crime, watching TV or tagging along with Ruiz to learn computer repairs. “He was there almost every day,” Lin said.

Another daughter, also named Maritza, in her 20s, was not home. She testified that Morales had asked her out more than a week before the killings, but that she had refused.

Eventually, work by the county Sheriff’s Department crime lab allowed detectives to solve the case, Lin said. Most of the 35 witnesses called by prosecutors were crime lab technicians or forensics experts.

Evidence presented at trial showed that Morales left a palm print on the handle of a mop used at the crime scene, Lin said. His DNA was also found inside Jasmine’s body.

After a two-week trial, a jury found Morales guilty of four counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances. The panel is scheduled to return Friday for the penalty phase of the trial to consider whether to recommend a death sentence.

Attorneys for Morales, deputy public defenders Ruben Marquez and Jerry Weil, could not be reached for comment.

According to prosecutors, Morales said he didn’t commit the crime. He did not testify at trial before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Cowell in Norwalk, but he told deputies beforehand that he had walked in on two men dressed in black inside the house when he went to visit the family. He said the men tied him up, and he watched them kill the victims.

Prosecutors said during the trial that on the day of the killings Morales was wearing a Slayer T-shirt. Slayer is a heavy metal band known for lyrics about violence and death. Nearly a decade ago, three San Luis Obispo youths pleaded guilty to killing a 15-year-old girl, saying Slayer’s songs incited them to commit the crime. The girl’s parents sued the band, but a judge threw out the lawsuit in 2001, ruling that the band’s music is protected by the 1st Amendment.