Valentine’s Day date who vanished inspires a bill seeking a tougher penalty for body dumping

Responding to the case of a woman whose body was found in Cleveland National Forest two months after she disappeared following a Valentine’s Day night out in Costa Mesa, state Sen. Janet Nguyen introduced a bill Wednesday that could increase the penalty for moving a corpse with intent to conceal it.

Senate Bill 1088 looks to change the offense from a misdemeanor to a “wobbler,” which would allow a judge to impose a greater penalty if circumstances warrant it. Currently, dumping a body after an accidental death carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail or a fine ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, or both a fine and jail time, according to a news release from the Garden Grove Republican’s office.

In February 2015, Erica Alonso, 28, of Laguna Hills visited the Sutra nightclub in Costa Mesa with her on-and-off boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. Authorities said she went to the boyfriend’s Irvine home and drove away early the next morning. She was missing until her body was found in late April in an isolated spot off Ortega Highway near San Juan Capistrano.

The Orange County coroner’s office ruled Alonso’s death an overdose caused by a combination of alcohol and GHB, commonly referred to as a date-rape drug.

At the time, Orange County sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock said, “The indications are that she died somewhere else and then the body was dumped out there.”

Authorities don’t believe Alonso was sexually assaulted or that her death was a homicide. But “the individual(s) who moved her body chose to interfere rather than cooperate with authorities,” Nguyen said in a statement. “The ramifications of these careless actions are immeasurable, and I believe a judge deserves discretion in cases like this to administer a higher penalty.

“It is disturbing that this form of a crime is still penalized in the same category as petty theft in the state of California,” Nguyen said. “This legislation seeks to change that.”

SB 1088, co-authored by state Sens. Pat Bates and Jim Nielsen and Assemblyman Bill Brough, is expected to be heard this spring by the Senate public safety and appropriations committees, according to the news release.