Police Deny Giving Up Search for Girl’s Killer

A Santa Ana Police Department spokesman said Monday that there are no suspects or solid leads in the June 3 murder of Patricia Lopez, 9, but he denied allegations that police have given up the investigation.

Four full-time investigators are analyzing as “possible suspects” more than 70 names from a larger list of 1,200 sex offenders in Southern California, Lt. Robert Chavez said Monday at a press conference.

The conference was called a day after Patricia’s father, Ascension Lopez, criticized the police in a newspaper report, saying they had “forgotten” about his daughter’s murder case.

Patricia, a third-grade student at Monte Vista Elementary School, disappeared near the school June 3. Her battered body was found two days later about two miles away in a drainpipe in the Santa Ana River channel below the Fairview Street Bridge.

“Police have not told us anything,” Patricia’s mother, Modesta Lopez, said Monday at the family’s home. “The last we heard was that an investigator went to Chicago to interview some man who might be a suspect. But we haven’t heard anything since.

“My husband said he believes that maybe they’ve forgotten about Patricia,” she said.

Seen Leaving School

The girl was seen leaving Monte Vista about 2:40 p.m. She was supposed to meet her mother, as she did every school day, at the corner of Center Street and McFadden Avenue on her way home. Her mother arrived at the corner about five minutes late and did not see Patricia.

Chavez denied the family’s allegation.

“We are keeping contact with the family. We’re keeping them updated as much as we possibly can,” he said.

But instead of contacting the family on a daily basis as police did during the initial stages of the investigation, visits have become sporadic, occasioned when more “solid” evidence was found, he said.

“We don’t want to continually go to them with something that isn’t substantial,” Chavez said.

Chavez said two investigators traveled to Illinois a week ago to interview a possible suspect after he was arrested in that state. The man had a newspaper clipping about Patricia’s murder and several child’s items that were not identified.

“But after he was interviewed at a mental hospital in Effingham, Ill., it was determined that he was no longer a suspect in the girl’s death,” Chavez said, without elaborating.

Police have not changed their belief that Patricia walked or was driven voluntarily--not abducted--from the school to where her body was found.

Witnesses have described a Latino man who may have been seen with the girl in the river bed. He was described as in his 30s, stocky, having a thick mustache, and 5-feet, 9-inches tall.

Screening Suspects

Police are screening a list of possible suspects fitting that description, Chavez said.

Chavez said police haven’t been able to identify the owner of a gray pickup truck with a camper shell that witnesses said was parked near the river about the time Lopez was killed.

The owner is not a suspect, but police believe the owner may have seen something.

Meanwhile, police and representatives from the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center in Orange announced the creation of a reward fund that will be paid to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.

Donations may be made to the Patricia Lopez Fund, care of the Adam Walsh Center, 721 S. Parker St., Suite 280, Orange 92668.