Victims’ Families Wounded by Unsolved Murder Cases

Ten-year-old Jason Campbell often sits on the floor of the Palmdale apartment he shares with his mother, staring silently at pictures of his father, Juan, who was stabbed to death in Sepulveda almost a year ago.

Jason will turn to his mother and ask quietly, “Mommy, are they ever going to catch the people who killed my daddy? Will the people who killed him get away with it?”

Shirley Cooper, a 56-year-old medical records worker at UCLA Medical Center, said her grief from the loss of her 20-year-old daughter, who was found dead on a Van Nuys street in May, is heightened by the inability of detectives to find a motive or a suspect in the slaying.

Donna de la Cuesta, 25, said that when she sees a suspicious-looking person in her neighborhood, she wants to call the police and tell them that she may have found the person who murdered her mother-in-law, Angie Hernandez, one of two sisters who were shot to death in November as they returned from a shopping trip.

Frustration Cited

These families share more than the loss of a loved one to a murderer last year. That loss is compounded, they say, by a sense of frustration, anger and bitterness because, after weeks and even months of waiting, the cases are still unsolved.

And although police officials point to a 7.3% drop in crime in the San Fernando Valley in the past year, homicide detectives struggle to solve murder mysteries that seem almost to defy solution.

Last year’s murder victims ranged from well-liked personalities such as Campbell, a hefty former college football player regarded as the unofficial peacekeeper of Sepulveda Recreation Center, to Antonio Gonzalez, a transient from Fresno who was stabbed numerous times and found on railroad tracks in Northridge on Sept. 30.

Of 100 homicides during 1984 in the five Los Angeles Police Department divisions in the San Fernando Valley, 20 remained unsolved at the beginning of this year. Detectives have found it difficult to develop fresh clues or have warrants for suspects who cannot be located.

Case Without Clues

In the Gonzalez case, detectives have not been able to develop any clues despite appeals to the public for information.

“We put up posters in the liquor stores around Parthenia Street and Vanalden Avenue, and no one knows anything,” said Detective Lou Bobbitt. “It’s like this guy practically never existed.”

In Campbell’s case, police have a warrant for the arrest of Samuel Rosales, 36, who police say has a distinctive one-inch scar on the left side of his forehead. But detectives have been unable to locate him and believe he has fled the area.

Detective Roger Pida said that, even though he spends much of his time investigating new homicide cases, the unsolved cases haunt him.

“A lot of time may pass, but you don’t forget about these cases and these people who were killed,” Pida said. “They stay on your mind.

“We constantly try to generate new leads and new information, and we give the cases to different detectives every six months so that a different pair of eyes can look at them and maybe new ideas can develop. We don’t put the cases on the shelf.”

Notebooks on Cases

Information about unsolved cases is kept in blue loose-leaf notebooks containing numerous pictures, details of evidence and interviews with witnesses.

In one of those notebooks is the case of Angie Hernandez, 61, and Mary Gomez, 52, sisters who were shot to death as they were driving home from a store. Their bodies were found 30 minutes after they had left the Pacoima house where one of Hernandez’s sons, Sergio, lived.

The motor of the sisters’ car was running when it was found parked at Telfair Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard. The car’s right passenger window had been smashed, and the door on the driver’s side was open. The sisters’ purses were in the car, indicating that robbery was not a motive.

“This is an open wound that we feel every day, and we don’t have any answers, which makes everything just drag on,” said Frank Hernandez, 61, Angie Hernandez’s widower. “We feel everything--the anger, the bitterness. We at least want to know the reason why.”

Don’t Seek Vengeance

Although members of the family have sought information around the community and have kept in close touch with police, they said they do not seek vengeance.

“We believe in the Scriptures, and God says in the Bible that vengeance is His, so we know that whoever did this is not going to get away with it, even if it is not in this lifetime,” said Roselinda Sanchez, 30, a daughter-in-law of Hernandez. “We don’t want vengeance, but we do want justice.”

The family, including three of Mrs. Hernandez’s four sons and their spouses, as well as her nine grandchildren, gathered last week at the Mission Hills home of Carlos de la Cuesta, 27, her youngest son. As they sat in the living room, the relatives began talking animatedly, each voicing different theories about what might have happened that night.

Family Discussion

Some relatives argued that the sisters would have headed toward the police station if they thought someone was after them. Others said they must have been forced off the road--that they would not have stopped to talk to a stranger.

“It gets like this whenever we get together to talk about this,” Roselinda Sanchez said. “Everybody has a different idea, but no one really knows. Sometimes friends of ours start talking to us, trying to be helpful, but a lot of what they say is just stupid. But they’re just trying to help.”

Members of the family agreed that they thought police were doing all they could to apprehend the killer. “They call me once a week, sometimes as early as 7 a.m.,” said Sergio de la Cuesta, 29. “I think they’re really on top of this, and they will tell us right away if they discover anything.”

$5,000 Reward

The family also hopes that a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the sisters’ killer would prompt new leads in the case.

Detective Al Ferrand said the investigation was at a standstill last week but he and his men are still working on it.

“Some cases do affect us more, like this one, which was really uncalled for,” he said. “This was just two elderly women going to the store. Maybe whoever did this was intending to rob them and then panicked, but there were no witnesses. This was just a brutal slaying, and we’re going to keep going strong on this.”

Although the families of Mrs. Hernandez and Mrs. Gomez said they are satisfied with police efforts, the family of Juan Campbell indicated they are unhappy with the investigation into his murder.

Florence Campbell Gaffney, the mother of Juan Campbell, pounded on her sofa angrily as she sat in the living room of her Canyon Country home and discussed the investigation into her son’s murder.

Anger, Bitterness

“I never knew I could have so much anger and bitterness for our justice system,” Gaffney said. “I just can’t believe that it’s so hard to find the man who killed my son.”

Gaffney and her daughter-in-law, Karen Campbell, said they have started their own investigation into Juan Campbell’s murder and accused detectives of being uncooperative and unresponsive to their requests to be updated daily.

“The police thought we were pushing too hard,” Gaffney said. “But this is my son, and I can’t push too hard where he’s concerned. I can’t push hard enough. I’ll never stop until I die.”

Juan Campbell, 30, who installed video games in stores, was a regular visitor to Sepulveda Recreation Center, where he played basketball and helped to maintain peace between the multiracial groups who use the park as a hangout. He was known for his sense of humor.

Fight Described

In March, police said, Campbell tried to break up a fight involving an acquaintance and a group of men over a $3 bet on a handball game. Later, the group of men allegedly confronted Campbell, who had been preparing to leave the park but returned to pick up a cap he had dropped in the scuffle. One of them stabbed Campbell in the chest, police said. He died two hours later at Olive View Medical Center.

Authorities later arrested five Van Nuys residents, but all of them were subsequently released.

Although police have a warrant out for the arrest of Rosales in connection with the slaying, they believe he may have fled to Mexico or to an area near Bakersfield. “The Mexican authorities have been alerted, so he’s not out of our reach,” Pida said.

But Gaffney and Karen Campbell said police had an opportunity to arrest Rosales soon after the slayings. They also contend that police withheld information from them, refused their assistance and neglected to return their phone calls.

“We have not approached this with a lack of common sense, and we have never been at the point of hysteria,” said Karen Campbell, who is also the mother of Campbell’s 14-month-old daughter, Caleena. “The family have all discussed this logically, and we find contradictions in what everyone is telling us. We think the police could do a lot better than they have been doing.”

Pain Still Felt

Karen Campbell and Gaffney talked about their frustration in a measured tones. But Campbell said the pain has never left.

“Every day that goes by is another day Juan doesn’t have that his killer does,” Karen Campbell said. “I’ll tell you, Juan would live those days a lot better than he is. I just want to see justice done, just like the law says.”

Pida said the investigation into Campbell’s death was conducted “just as impartially, professionally and fairly as any other investigation. The family lost a loved one, and I have sympathy for their feelings, but we have done everything we can and are still doing everything we can. We want to catch the person who did this, too. Mr. Campbell was a good guy.”

Shirley Cooper said she thought police had done all they could to apprehend the murderer of her daughter, Karen, who was found dead May 6 on the 14500 block of Cabrito Road in Van Nuys.

With Other Man

Police said that Karen Cooper, 20, had gone out with two men friends to a Van Nuys disco called the Gold Apple. The group struck up a conversation with another man, and they left together to go to another bar. An hour later, at 11:30 p.m., they returned to the Gold Apple and arranged to meet later that night at the apartment of one of Karen Cooper’s friends.

When they left the bar, Karen Cooper’s two friends got into one car and she left in another belonging to the new acquaintance. Her friends thought Cooper and the other man would follow them back to the apartment, but they never saw her again.

She was found dead a few hours later, police said. She had been beaten and run over by a car several times, police said.

Although detectives have a description of the car and a composite drawing of the suspect, they have not located him. They also have not been able to determine a motive for the slaying.

“Once again, it’s one of those cases where we just don’t know what happened or why it happened,” Detective Rick Jamison said.

“The police have been real helpful,” Shirley Cooper said. “They told me I could call them any time. I haven’t called. I don’t want to bother them, and if they have something, they’ll call me.”

As Shirely Cooper spoke, her voice broke and she started sobbing. “I’m trying not to be a burden on my friends. It’s just not going to be over until they catch who did this.

“It will never be totally over, and I think about Karen every day. I just want the police to catch the people who do these awful things. Then at least I will feel some relief.”