7-Month Slaying Probe ‘Too Important to Talk About’

No fewer than 14 bullets, fired in a narrow swath, struck the Porsche that Joe Luis Avila was driving shortly after midnight on May 8, killing the man prosecutors once called the mastermind of the drug-smuggling “Tahiti Connection.”

Although Avila was never tried on that 1977 indictment--procedural error by prosecutors led a judge to dismiss the charge--officials were quick to link his death to that past.

“Drugs are the primary deal here,” said the county’s chief deputy district attorney, James G. Enright, after the killing. “The first word out of anybody’s mouth is that he was a big-time drug dealer.”

But more than seven months after Avila’s execution-style slaying, there has yet to be a second word. Sheriff’s officials say two detectives remain assigned to the case, but they won’t talk about the progress of that investigation and have yet to confirm that the shooting was drug-related.

The Avila case, said Lt. Richard J. Olson, is “just too important to talk about.”

Avila’s family has denied that the 40-year-old victim was involved in drug trafficking and said they had no idea why anyone would have wanted him dead.

They conceded that he had financial and personal problems, and that his third wife was suing him for divorce.

Still, by conventional estimates, life had been treating Avila well: in addition to his Porsche, the father of two owned a $500,000 home in Santa Ana Heights and two El Ranchito restaurants worth more than $2 million.

As was his custom, Avila was helping to close his restaurants the evening of May 7. He had left the Costa Mesa restaurant at 11 p.m. and was driving his black 1985 Porsche Carrera convertible to the Santa Ana Heights restaurant when the crime occurred.

According to detectives’ hypotheses, Avila apparently began to turn right onto Tustin Avenue from Santa Isabel Avenue in Santa Ana Heights when he stopped to avoid a small motorcycle that was parked to block his route.

At that point, the theory goes, a car that had been following him pulled up, and a gunman fired at least 14 shots into the driver’s side, starting near the roof, running across the left door’s window and ending in the front seat.

When police arrived at 12:28 p.m., they found Avila’s car, with its headlights on, its right-turn signal flashing and his body still belted into the seat.

Detectives soon traced the motorcycle to a Los Angeles County dealership, only to discover that the buyer had given a non-existent address and a name that does not appear on any California driver’s license.

Sheriff’s Capt. Doug Storm said after the killing, “We have no indication that there were any drugs going on at the time of the shooting, but we do know . . . that he was involved in drug dealings.”

In October, 1977, the U.S. attorney in Honolulu named Avila, along with a Hawaii man, as the mastermind of a cocaine-smuggling ring known as the Tahiti Connection. Prosecutors alleged that Avila, his brother Sergio and nine others were involved in a scheme that used false-bottomed suitcases to ship Peruvian cocaine to the United States via Tahiti.

But Avila’s attorney, F. Lee Bailey, persuaded a federal judge that prosecutors improperly presented evidence to the grand jury that indicted Avila. The judge dismissed the charges in March, 1978, ruling that witnesses against the 11 should have testified before the grand jury in person.

At his church, some said Avila lately had added a spiritual dimension to his life.

At a memorial service for Avila in May, Jesse Miranda, a friend of the family and the superintendent of the Latin American District Assemblies of God, said, “In the last few months of his life, he had given his life to the Lord.”

Miranda added, “I’m glad to tell you he is in a good place.”