Fingerprint System Tripped Him Up : Compton Man Guilty of Decade-Old Murder

Johnny Earle Moore of Compton was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday in a 10-year-old slaying that had frustrated investigators until fingerprints from the victim’s Anaheim home were plugged into the state’s automated fingerprint system.

Moore faces a sentence of 25 years to life for the May 13, 1977, slaying of Bulmaro Amaya during a robbery of Amaya’s home. Amaya’s 3 1/2-year-old son, Mario, was also shot in the incident. The bullet paralyzed the boy, now 13.

A set of prints, lifted from the victim’s kitchen windowsill, had gone unmatched for nine years before Anaheim police investigators could find a match through the state’s new automated fingerprint system. The test turned up nothing the first time.

One of 10 Aliases

But after the state Department of Justice added new fingerprints to its system, the Anaheim prints were resubmitted and a match was made last November. It established that the prints were those of Rodfiki Rogers, who was in jail in Los Angeles on a drug charge. Rogers turned out to be one of 10 aliases used by Moore, 30.

Because of the statute of limitations, Moore could not be charged with robbery or attempted murder of the boy. But there is no statute of limitations in California for murder.

“An irony is that there was no death penalty in California when this crime occurred,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Douglas H. Woodsmall said. “The new law was passed about three months later. If this incident had occurred three months later, he (Moore) might be facing the death penalty right now.”

The fingerprint was the heart of Woodsmall’s case. But he also introduced evidence in which Moore had told police that he had been at the Amaya house, but for other reasons.

Moore said a car full of pimps had chased him to Orange County from Los Angeles, and that he had stopped at the Amaya house to relieve himself in the front yard. Moore said he saw a kitchen window open and had peered inside, evidently leaving his fingerprints at that time.

Moore did not testify at his trial.

Let Husband, Son in Bed

Amaya’s wife, Irene, had gone to work about 10:30 p.m. and left her husband and their son in bed together. The slain man and the boy were not found until the next morning, when the boy’s grandmother came over to see why they had not arrived at her house, as expected.

Police reports relate that the boy told her: “Man come kill daddy; I dead, too, grandma.”

“The key was certainly the automated fingerprint system,” Woodsmall said. “Without it, Moore would never have been arrested.”

Local police no longer have to go to Sacramento to try to match fingerprints. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is now linked with the statewide Cal ID system, as it is called. That system is available to all local police agencies.

Moore will be sentenced Sept. 25 by Superior Court Judge Jean H. Rheinheimer.