Man Arrested in Slaying of Santa Ana Girl

A Los Angeles man has been arrested in Texas in connection with the murder of Nadia Puente, the 9-year-old Santa Ana girl who was abducted 2 weeks ago on her way home from school.

Richard Lucio DeHoyos, 31, was arrested Saturday by Santa Ana and San Antonio police at a taco stand in San Antonio but escaped the next day. He was arrested again less than an hour later sitting on a bus bench a few blocks from the jail, according to police and other reports.

Since his arrest, DeHoyos has told newspaper and TV reporters in San Antonio that he killed the schoolgirl in a Santa Ana hotel room.

“DeHoyos has been positively linked to the murder through physical evidence found at the scene,” Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters said at a news conference Monday. Walters and other police officials declined to elaborate on the evidence that led them to DeHoyos, who police said was a drifter who has lived in Los Angeles, Santa Ana and other parts of Orange County during the past few years.

Walters declined to say whether Santa Ana police have been able to question DeHoyos about the slaying.

Police did say, however, that a gray 1989 Nissan coupe that belonged to DeHoyos and matched the description of a car given by students at Nadia’s school was found at Los Angeles International

Airport. It has been impounded by police and will be searched for evidence, Walters said.

Santa Ana police obtained a warrant for DeHoyos’ arrest Friday before flying to San Antonio, the chief said.

DeHoyos’ grandmother, contacted at her home in Los Angeles, said DeHoyos left Los Angeles for San Antonio to visit his mother about 2 weeks ago.

The fourth-grader from Diamond Elementary School disappeared March 20 on her way home from school. Transients found her body the next day in Griffith Park. An autopsy found that she had been sexually molested and killed by asphyxiation caused by pressure against her chest.

DeHoyos told reporters from a San Antonio newspaper that he had killed the girl in a Santa Ana hotel room.

“I drowned her in a bathtub,” he calmly told a reporter from the San Antonio Light. “I didn’t know her. I just picked her up. I was on drugs--cocaine. I was angry. I’d lost my job. I was out of my mind.”

A Los Angeles coroner’s office spokesman said DeHoyos’ statement that he drowned the girl in a bathtub was not inconsistent with the autopsy findings.

Statements Not Inconsistent

“He might have pressed her chest and then put her in the water,” spokesman Bob Dambacher said. “The object (that was pressed against her chest) could very well have been the floor . . . or the floor of the bathtub.”

Police said that DeHoyos’ comments should not be considered a confession and asked that they not be given too much attention.

DeHoyos’ comments came Sunday night after he was arrested a second time in about 24 hours. After authorities booked him into Bexar County Jail early Sunday morning, he escaped. He wadded up a piece of paper and stuck it in the lock to his cell in the jail’s intake area, preventing the lock from catching, Bexar County Jail Administrator Tom Barry told the San Antonio Express-News on Monday.

Later that day, he left his cell and took an elevator to the basement of the building, explaining to sheriff’s deputies that he was there to get a prisoner released on bond and had become lost.

Jailers escorted DeHoyos out of the jail--a new, multimillion-dollar facility--and told him not to come back in, Barry said.

Sunday night, jailers discovered that DeHoyos was missing and issued an all-points bulletin.

He was found about an hour later at a bus bench a few blocks from the jail.

The San Antonio Express-News reported Monday that Barry said he had ordered the firing of the jail’s shift commander, a captain, as well as another jailer. Two other sheriff’s deputies were to be placed on probation, he said.

DeHoyos waived extradition at a court hearing in San Antonio on Monday. He was to leave for Los Angeles today, Texas authorities said.

Last fall, DeHoyos lived in a wood-frame boardinghouse on 24th Street in the Pico-Union section of Los Angeles, just north of the Coliseum.

Olga Cepeda, DeHoyos’ former landlady, said he told her that he worked at the United States Aluminum Corp. in Vernon. “He came at 7 at night from work,” Cepeda said. “He would cook his dinner and go to sleep, and that’s all he ever did.”

Tenants at the boardinghouse described DeHoyos as a calm, quiet man who couldn’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke.

“He was very quiet, never disrespectful,” said Rita Comas, 27, a housekeeper for a Beverly Hills family. “He invited us to a picnic once, but we didn’t go.”

“He didn’t have any vices,” Comas said in Spanish. “In the time I knew him I never saw him drink.”

Comas said DeHoyos shared a room in the three-room boardinghouse with two other men. “He moved to another room in the house because he had a new roommate who smoked,” she said.

Another boarder, Irma Vasquez, 28, said DeHoyos held various jobs, as a deliveryman and as a worker at a fast-food restaurant.

DeHoyos’ grandmother, reached at her South-Central Los Angeles home, said he had stayed at her home for about 4 months before leaving suddenly for San Antonio.

“He went by airplane about 2 weeks ago,” said the elderly woman, who did not wish to give her name. “He said he wanted to see his mother.”

She said her grandson was raised in San Antonio and had come to Los Angeles after spending some time in Central America. His uncle got him a job at a nearby glass factory, but DeHoyos left the job because of “difficulties,” she said.

Asked if she could imagine DeHoyos committing a crime like the slaying of Nadia Puente, she answered in Spanish:

‘He Behaved’

“Here in the house he was good. He behaved.”

Police said DeHoyos that has no record as a sex offender in California and that his only apparent conviction was in Texas more than a decade ago. Details of that case were not immediately available Monday.

Nadia’s parents were taken by police to an undisclosed location just before the news conference and could not be reached for comment. The girl’s uncle, Adan Arreola, said that he was glad an arrest had been made but that it was too early to feel relieved.

“I don’t know if it’s true or if it’s the right person,” Arreola said.

Two days after Nadia was slain, Santa Ana police arrested another man and held a news conference much like Monday’s, saying that physical evidence linked the man to the slaying and that they were confident they had the right suspect.

But police released the man a few hours later after checking his alibi. Sgt. John McClain said Monday that the man had been “caught up in a web of circumstances” that was untangled only after he was arrested and questioned.

The same physical evidence that had implicated the first suspect ultimately led police to DeHoyos, McClain said.