8 Slayings on Border Unsolved as Year Begins

San Diego homicide detectives began 1986 with eight unsolved slayings of illegal aliens left over from last year--more than double their normal caseload of such killings.

All but one of the killings took place in the barren rolling hills near the San Ysidro border crossing. In each case, detectives had a bloody corpse, few witnesses and little physical evidence. Investigators say they are lucky to learn the names of the victims in many border killings, let alone the suspects.

In recent years, detectives assigned to the San Diego Police Department’s homicide detail have investigated an average of three or four slayings of illegal aliens each year. In 1985, nine undocumented aliens were killed in San Diego, and police have no suspects in eight of the crimes.

Authorities believe all but one of the killings were committed by Mexican bandits who terrorize and rob aliens immediately after they enter the United States, said Lt. Paul Ybarrondo, head of the San Diego homicide unit.

Most of the killings are brutal. Two of the victims bled to death after their skulls were crushed with rocks. Four were shot, two died of knife stabs and one was hacked to death.

Ybarrondo blamed Mexico’s poor economy for the upsurge in slayings by border bandits. He said that, when police find the body of an illegal alien near the border, their investigation often goes nowhere.

“We don’t have the leads you can follow up on in a normal case,” Ybarrondo said. “You can’t find where they live, who they hung out with and what they did that might lead to some conclusions of how they died.”

Most of the robbery victims are poor, uneducated Mexican farmers, Ybarrondo said. “The vast majority of them go along with the program and give up what they’ve got,” he said. “Usually the ones who end up dead resisted or put up a struggle.”

Bandits find the rough terrain on the U.S. side of the border fertile territory for preying on aliens who enter San Diego at night, police said. They also prefer to commit crimes in San Diego because Mexican authorities are “very harsh” in dealing with bandits, said Detective Ron Collins, who works in the San Diego Police Department’s liaison office.

“They feel if they can commit a crime here with relative safety and then flee back to Mexico, U.S. authorities will never be able to figure it out,” Collins said.

In most cases, the bandits are right.

Collins, who visits Mexico daily with his partner, George Navarro, to consult authorities there on police cases, said that recent joint investigations have been hampered since the State Judicial Police decided last year to disband its homicide unit. Instead, state police detectives in Mexico are assigned a wide variety of cases based on who is working when the crimes occur.

The policy change has hurt the investigation of complex crimes such as homicide, Collins said.

“You can’t have guys who work auto detail for years jump into homicide,” Collins said. “Homicide is such a detail position where interviews and the recovery of evidence are extremely important. You’re talking about the killing of a human being, not the forging of a check. . . . You could lose a case just because a guy who is not familiar with homicide cases missed details that would normally get picked up by a homicide investigator.”

State Judicial Police officials in in Tijuana were not available to discuss homicide investigations.

Last month, San Diego police administrators arranged a meeting with State Judicial Police officials to persuade them to appoint two bilingual detectives as homicide specialists. But Mexican authorities called off the session at the last minute, according to San Diego police sources. Another meeting is being arranged for later this month.

“These guys do an excellent job in investigating crimes,” Collins said of his Mexican counterparts. “They’re handicapped by the economy and equipment, but I give them every credit in the world. They know the crooks, they know who their friends are and who they run with. They go out and pick up people . . . and bring guys to the surface.”

But, Collins said, without a full-time Mexican homicide team, the odds against San Diego police cracking border homicide cases are great.

Prosecutors said that, when police make a rare arrest of a bandit accused of murder, few witnesses are willing to testify in court.

“It’s a fluid situation in which you are dealing with people who are breaking the law,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Dick Lewis. “In the final analysis, the poor people who are coming across the border are fleeing from the law and no one has an interest to stick around.”

Police provided the following details of 1985 slayings of illegal aliens:

Jan. 9: Two construction surveyors working in fields near Fairbanks Ranch discovered the decomposed body of Marcial Santos, 22, a farm worker from the state of Guerrero. Police identified Santos from a pay stub for field work found near the body. Police believe Santos had just gotten paid and was headed back to Mexico when he was robbed. An autopsy indicates that Santos was hacked to death with a heavy instrument like a machete. Detectives have been unable to locate two relatives who reportedly left for Mexico the same time as Santos did.

Feb. 27: Three undocumented aliens reported that a companion was stabbed as they crossed the border at Martinez Canyon near California 117 and Cactus Road. A two-hour search turned up the victim, who was bleeding from stab wounds in the chest and the back. A Life Flight helicopter was summoned, but the man was pronounced dead at the scene. The aliens told police they were among a group of seven Mexicans crossing the border when they were confronted by three armed men wearing ski masks. The bandits ordered the aliens to lie on the ground, then took their money. The victim was stabbed several times after he resisted the robbers. The aliens said the victim was Elias Gutierrez, 45, but police have been unable to verify the identification.

March 14: The body of Arturo Velasquez, 19, of Ensenada was found, with a .38-caliber gunshot wound in the shoulder, at daybreak in Washer Woman Flats, an area one-quarter mile north of the border and one-half mile east of the San Ysidro crossing. Police believe that two men who accompanied Velasquez across the border were also shot by bandits and returned to Mexico. One of the men reportedly was picked up by the Mexican Red Cross and treated for injuries in a Mexican hospital, but authorities have no witnesses or suspects.

April 1: Ramon Duarte, 29, was jumped by a group of robbers, shot and killed as he escorted 13 illegal aliens across the border. Three weeks later, Enrique Quintero, 23, was one of three people arrested near the border for attempting to shoot and rob U.S. Border Patrol agents. Ballistics tests on a rare, English-made Webley .38-caliber revolver recovered from Quintero found that the same weapon was used to kill Duarte. Quintero pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge after his partners told police he had shot Duarte. Quintero was sentenced to 13 years in prison, becoming the only person to be convicted in any of the nine slayings of illegal aliens last year.

May 10: Alejandro Martel-Silvestre, 25, a farm laborer from Jiquipilco, and a companion had walked one-half mile into the United States when two Mexican robbers brandished knives and demanded money. A fight broke out and Martel-Silvestre was stabbed repeatedly, according to his companion, who survived several blows to the head with rocks. The suspects were spotted fleeing south by a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter unit but they crossed the border before agents could intercept them. By the time the information was relayed to Mexican authorities, the robbers had escaped. The case has been turned over to the Baja California State Judicial Police.

May 20: U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested three undocumented aliens, who reported finding a body in a canyon near the border two miles east of the San Ysidro crossing. The aliens led agents to the location, where they found a man under a large scrub oak bush with his pants pockets turned inside out. The man had been struck on the head with a large rock. The San Diego County coroner’s office later received a phone call from the victim’s relatives in Mexico, who identified the man as Oscar Romero, 39.

May 30: Mexican authorities reported seeing a body 40 yards north of the border in a sewage spill one mile west of the San Ysidro crossing. San Diego police found a male Latino who had been beaten on the head with rocks. The man’s fingerprints were given to State Judicial Police, but Mexican authorities have not been able to identify him. Mexican police do not have a computerized fingerprint system.

Aug. 8: Juan Magana-Oceguera, 24, was lured across the border and shot in the head by one of his partners who ran an alien-smuggling ring, according to police. The case was turned over to Mexican authorities and is still under investigation.

Oct. 21: A group of eight undocumented aliens were walking north along the Otay River when a robber holding a gun in each hand began firing shots without warning. The man took money from the aliens, who then ran away on foot. When the Mexican citizens regrouped, they noticed that they were missing one of their comrades. They went back to the scene and found that Felisiano Hermosillo, 24, had been shot to death. Police say they have developed no new information in the case.