Probe Begun Into Confessions of Two Aliens to Street Killings

They were there when the victim was robbed and killed seven months before in downtown Los Angeles, the two suspects told police. They had participated in the crimes, but had not done the actual stabbing, the men said.

One suspect, Ruben Avila Trujillo, also gave police details of his involvement in a second downtown murder and even admitted that he had been wearing a black baseball cap and blue Levis during both gang-related killings, just as witnesses had described.

There was only one problem with these confessions, which resulted in murder and robbery charges against Trujillo, 24, and Pedro Barrios Delvillar, 18, both illegal aliens from Mexico. Both men were in custody--one in jail, the other in a youth facility--when the crimes occurred.

Dismisses Charges

Earlier this week, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Candace D. Cooper granted a prosecution motion to dismiss charges against both men in the two murders, which occurred within a few hours of each other March 21.

Both the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office have begun investigations to find out what went wrong.

Trujillo was in San Diego County Jail the day of the murders after pleading guilty to automobile-tampering charges. His attorney, James A. Goldstein, claims that his client, who had been held without bail since his Oct. 28 arrest, was slapped and punched by Los Angeles Police Detective James McCann until he agreed to give the answers authorities wanted.

Delvillar’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Belinda Fischer, said her client, held in lieu of $250,000 bail since his Oct. 15 arrest, told her that he was “intimidated and terrified” during his interview with McCann.

Delvillar was in a California Youth Authority facility from March, 1982, until last July 12, according to the police interrogation, a tape of which was made available by Goldstein.

McCann, 39, a 15-year police veteran, did not return a reporter’s phone calls Tuesday. But police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said the commanding officers of the Central Bureau, where the interviews took place, are investigating.

“These are serious allegations,” Booth said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Genelin, head of the Hard Core Gang Division, which filed the murder charges, said he has seen no evidence of police brutality. But he said his office would investigate further. He also said a “statement of dismissal” would be filed in court to explain what happened.

Genelin pointed out that before police obtained the confessions, Patricia Contreras, a gang member who claimed to have witnessed both killings and who is a defendant in a third robbery-homicide, had named both suspects in a detailed description of the incidents.

“The woman is on videotape. . . . She seems to be very clear in her testimony,” Genelin said, adding that he was mystified by the case. “I can’t explain it.”

Discounting Contreras’s statements, Goldstein said she had not named Trujillo specifically, but had used nicknames--Solo and Sinaloa--that are “very common street names.”

Contreras and Delvillar were together when arrested, but the woman was never asked to identify a photo of Trujillo, Goldstein said.

Fischer described Contreras as a “flake.”

Goldstein said the intimidation of Trujillo allegedly occurred in private, before McCann turned on his tape recorder for the formal interview, which was conducted with the help of a Spanish-speaking detective.

“McCann slapped him across the face openhanded and continued to slap him across the face, and told him he was going to continue the interrogation until he got the truth,” Goldstein said Trujillo had told him. “The ‘truth’ was that he had committed these two murders.”

The attorney, who would not allow his client to be interviewed by The Times, added that McCann had punched Trujillo “closed-fisted, below the rib cage.”

Fischer stopped short of labeling police conduct as brutality, but she said that in addition to feeling terrified, her client had been drinking when he was picked up by police “and may not have been absolutely cognizant of what was going on.”

She added: “It is my belief that my client is not very smart.”

Fischer said she had told prosecutors that they had the wrong man more than a month ago, after California Youth Authority officials confirmed that Delvillar had been in custody on March 21.

“How is it that someone sits in jail for five weeks when he has an absolutely ironclad alibi?” Fischer asked.

Genelin said he had assumed that Delvillar was on a CYA work furlough program when the slaying occurred, as the police report states.

Goldstein, however, did not tell prosecutors until last Friday that he was certain that his client had been incarcerated at the time of the killings.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Loren M. Naiman, who was handling the case, moved swiftly once he had this information, the attorney said.

Delvillar was arrested in Pershing Square by McCann and two other officers after he was spotted drinking beer. They also found a “Rambo”-type knife on him, they reported.

Under police questioning, Delvillar said he and “Solo” had been involved in the robbery of Callejas Gonzalez, 23, who died in front of a drugstore on 5th Street and Broadway after being stabbed three times.

On the tape, Delvillar tells police he was “locked up” until last July, but at one point concedes, “I was coming out for day passes” earlier than that.

When Delvillar tries to describe something he had heard, McCann interjects, “No, homeboy, it’s not that he told you the story. . . . You saw it. You were there. You grabbed the guy’s foot.”

Delvillar’s co-defendant was also arrested in Pershing Square, after an off-duty security guard approached McCann and another detective, saying that two men had tried to sell him drugs. Searching the area, the detectives spotted Trujillo, who had tattoos on his hands reading “Solo” and “Sinaloa.”

At first, Trujillo told police in Spanish that he had merely witnessed the slaying of Albert Diaz Martinez, 18, of North Hollywood, who was stabbed six times in an abandoned building on South Hope Street used by gang members for sleeping and selling drugs. Under further questioning, however, Trujillo described his own participation in the robbery, according to the taped interview.

Asked about the Gonzalez stabbing, Trujillo again denied any involvement, but later changed his story, saying that he “grabbed (Gonzalez) around the neck in a bar-arm fashion,” while another man stabbed the victim, as summarized in the police report.

Despite the dismissal of the murder charges, Trujillo and Delvillar remain in custody, pending Immigration and Naturalization Service hearings.

Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer and Paul Feldman contributed to this article.