Mexico Seizes Suspect in ’80 Slaying of Pacoima Girl

Six years after the abduction and slaying of a 7-year-old Pacoima girl outraged that community, authorities in Mexico have arrested a suspect in the case.

Los Angeles police announced Wednesday that Luis Raul Castro, 59, was arrested Nov. 24 at his home in Mexicali by Mexican federal police.

Castro has been charged in Mexican federal court with the murder and sexual molestation of Lisa Ann Rosales, whose strangled, beaten body was found in a ditch in Lake View Terrace, about three miles from her home, on Dec. 9, 1980, a day after she was kidnaped while walking home from school.

Castro was an illegal alien living and working near the girl’s home at the time of the slaying, Lt. Bernard D. Conine said.

Castro has confessed to Mexican authorities that he committed the crime, according to Angel Saad, Mexican federal district attorney for Baja California. Castro faces a maximum of 32 years in prison if convicted at his trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday, Saad said in a telephone interview.

Under Mexican law, any citizen of Mexico can be tried there on charges stemming from a crime in a foreign country if the act is also a crime in Mexico. Mexico has no death penalty.

Became Suspect in 1985

Los Angeles police said that Castro became a suspect in early 1985, after investigators began checking a list of sex offenders in California to see if any could have been near the scene of the crime in 1980.

Police learned that Castro had left a paying job in Pacoima to return to his native Mexicali “one to two months” after the Rosales girl’s killing, Conine said.

Castro is also under investigation in the sexual molestation and strangulation killing of Victoria Brown, 8, of South Los Angeles, he said.

Police said there was physical evidence linking Castro to the crime, but would not elaborate. Detectives are still reviewing evidence and witness accounts, Conine said.

The police official said, however, that Castro does not fit the description of a man given by one of Lisa Ann’s classmates, who said she witnessed the abduction.

The classmate told police she saw a man pull Lisa Ann into a yellow truck as the girl walked south in the 11300 block of Herrick Avenue shortly after stepping off a school bus that stopped near her home.

Conine said no yellow truck has been found to connect Castro to the crime.

Mexican Authorities Contacted

After tracing Castro to Mexico, police contacted authorities there in July of this year, Conine said. Los Angeles police and state Department of Justice authorities presented their evidence to the Mexicans, who conducted their own investigation and decided to try Castro in Mexico.

The search for Lisa Ann’s killer has never stopped being an emotional issue in Pacoima. A garden was dedicated in her name at an elementary school and a college scholarship was established in her name at San Fernando High School.

Just last year, the Los Angeles City Council offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case. The offer expired after 60 days, and no one will receive an reward, police said.

Although many leads poured in soon after the killing, they had been exhausted by mid-1981, Conine said. In 1982, Detective Al Ferrand, the chief homicide detective in the Foothill Division, which covers Pacoima, was asked take a fresh look at the case, Conine said.

Investigators first looked for matching crimes, but they became “baffled” when none could be found, Conine said. They then began checking the list of sex offenders, eventually identifying about 200 men who might have been in the area.

Police would not say why Castro was on the list.

The mother of the victim, Mary Rosales, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But Conine said that when she was informed of the arrest, she said, “I thought you’d given up.”

He said Ferrand told her, “We never give up.”