Witness Asked to Lie Before Slaying, He Says : Friend Testifies in Teen-Ager’s Murder Trial About Trip to Park Before Girl, 14, Was Killed

Two days after the mutilated body of his former girlfriend was discovered, Carlos Alberto Tirado asked a close friend to lie to police about when Tirado last saw the victim, according to the friend’s testimony Wednesday at Tirado’s murder trial.

Tirado, now 17, telephoned the friend, Fernando Flores, at home and urged him not to tell police that Tirado had seen Norma Isela Ramirez on May 26, 1985, Flores testified. The 14-year-old Ramirez was killed the next day.

“He said not to tell the cops he had seen her on Sunday,” Flores, 16, told Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin on the first day of the trial. Tirado is being tried as a juvenile.

Ramirez had received a telephone call late on the night of her death and left her home about 10:30 p.m., according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles J. Middleton.

Her body, severely mutilated with a hatchet or machete, was found five hours later. The body was not identified until three days later, when investigators saw a picture of Ramirez in a Spanish-language newspaper owned by an uncle that described her as a missing person.

Flores testified that he, Tirado and Tirado’s cousin, Jose Sotelo, picked up Ramirez in a pickup truck in Santa Ana and drove her to a park on a Sunday, two days before her body was found.

While there, Flores said, he and Sotelo took a 20-minute walk, leaving Tirado and the girl in the back of the pickup.

When the two boys returned, Tirado insisted that Ramirez have sex with Sotelo in the pickup. When she refused, he pushed her and told her to walk home, Flores said.

Flores said Ramirez was crying and that his only comment to Tirado was: “That was cold-blooded.”

Although Santa Ana police said Tirado had been a “prime suspect,” he wasn’t arrested until almost two years after the slaying.

Because the Santa Ana youth was younger than 16 at the time of the crime, he cannot be tried as an adult, Middleton said. If McCartin finds Tirado guilty, he could be held by the California Youth Authority until he becomes 25.

Flores was allowed to testify despite objections by defense attorneys, who contended that police had coerced statements out of him earlier.

In court, Edison W. Miller, a former Orange County supervisor and co-counsel with J. Michael Hughes, told McCartin that on at least eight occasions before Tirado’s arrest Flores was picked up for questioning by Santa Ana police at his home or at school. He was handcuffed at times, Miller said.

“He was asked by police if he ever heard Tirado say he wanted to kill Norma. Flores said ‘no’ 118 times,” Miller said.

Miller said Flores, who was 13 at the time of the killing, was told during one interview that he “was a goddamn criminal” and that if he was lying the officer was “going to kill you.”

“For someone 13, he went through a tremendous interrogation,” Miller said.

During an interview outside the courtroom, Miller said the prosecution’s case “was skimpy.”

“Where’re the fingerprints?” he asked. “There’s no confession. Where’s the murder weapon? How about a witness that saw something? They don’t have anything. It’s all circumstantial.”

But during opening statements Wednesday, Middleton said the evidence will show that Tirado wanted to go out with Ramirez’s best friend. He dated her once, but she declined to go out with him again, citing her friendship with Ramirez.

“It was making him very mad,” Middleton said. “The prosecution will show that he made several statements to friends that he felt ‘like killing her (Ramirez).’ ”