Jailhouse Informant Says He Lied at 3 Murder Trials

A veteran jailhouse informant whose testimony helped send three Los Angeles County men to prison for life terms now says he lied at their murder trials at the urging of police.

Stephen Jesse Cisneros, a convicted arsonist, kidnaper and rapist serving a 70-year prison term, says he perjured himself when he testified that all three men confessed to him.

In sworn statements to a private investigator and in a subsequent interview with The Times, Cisneros says that, all told, he lied in five Los Angeles murder cases at the behest of police. In the remaining two cases, he says he testified falsely at preliminary hearings that two more men confessed.

One of those men is still awaiting trial. He faces a possible death penalty if convicted. The other pleaded guilty to a lesser charge--being an accessory to murder--and was sentenced to prison for three years.

Cisneros thus becomes the first jailhouse informant to admit under oath that he fabricated confessions in specific murder cases since an informant scandal surfaced in Los Angeles County last year.

The scandal broke when another veteran informant demonstrated how easily he could fake confessions, but he balked at being specific without a grant of immunity.

The consequences of Cisneros’ recantations are uncertain. One defense attorney has used them to file court papers seeking his client’s freedom. Another is considering an appeal.

The officers whom Cisneros has accused deny his charges, but the Los Angeles Police Department has started an internal affairs investigation in one case as a result of a Times inquiry.

Prosecutors involved in the cases contend Cisneros’ retractions are irrelevant because they had enough evidence to convict the defendants without his help. Defense lawyers dispute this.

Cisneros says he is now admitting to being a liar because he wants to ease his guilty conscience and because he is angry.

“The reason I am changing my statement,” he said, “is because all these D.A.s and officers that work with the snitches are doing it to make themselves look better, and at the end they screw the snitches. And there is a lot of people, innocent people, in jail.”

Cisneros was in and out of jail and prison for years before he was finally put away for the 70 year term as the “Los Angeles Riverbed Rapist” who abducted at least eight illegal alien women from 1980 to 1985 by posing as an immigration officer. He handcuffed the women, and raped and sodomized them near the Los Angeles River before letting them go.

He was a police informant while behind bars and on the street.

Whether he is telling the truth now--or whether he was telling the truth on the witness stand--is impossible to say. Two psychiatrists years ago told judges--and the district attorney’s office--that Cisneros was a compulsive liar.

Prosecutors who used Cisneros to testify to confessions purportedly made to him said they were unaware of these psychiatric evaluations. Because of a lack of information-sharing within the district attorney’s office, some prosecutors said they were unaware that Cisneros had been an informant in any case other than their own.

Cisneros recanted his testimony about the murder confessions in sworn statements to a private detective who interviewed him recently in prison. The detective, Sue Sarkis, took along a court stenographer, who placed Cisneros under oath and transcribed their talks. Sarkis made the transcript available to The Times.

During an interview Friday at Folsom state prison, Cisneros repeated in detail the account he gave to the private investigator and added to it by describing another case in which he said he had lied.

In the case in which his testimony probably had the most impact, Cisneros had told the court that Carlos Herrera Vargas confessed to him over drinks at a Montebello bar that he had accidentally killed a young woman.

During a conversation about why Vargas had not attended a fund-raiser to benefit the dead woman’s child, Cisneros testified that a drunken Vargas blurted out that “he didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident. It just happened.”

Now, Cisneros says he was lying. He says Vargas never admitted responsibility for the killing. Cisneros says that a Montebello police officer, Robert Crawford, paid him $150--and offered him help on his own criminal case--to say that Vargas confessed.

Vargas was convicted of the attempted rape and first-degree murder of the young woman and was sentenced to prison for 29 years to life.

Crawford, the Montebello police officer, responded to Cisneros’ allegations by saying: “In no way would myself or (my partner) ever advise an informant to lie. . . . Also . . . I never paid him a dime.”

“I think I gave him five bucks once and that was all,” said Crawford’s then-partner, Sgt. Herbert Albert. “Five bucks and a couple of packs of cigarettes.”

Other evidence against Vargas consisted of a pubic hair found on the victim’s chest, which an FBI expert testified matched characteristics of the defendant’s hair, but which the expert would not say was “probably” that of the defendant.

Still other evidence was a second reputed confession by Vargas to an informant.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Walls, said in an interview that there was ample other circumstantial evidence to convict Vargas without the informants’ testimony.

However, the judge at Vargas’ trial, Alexander Williams III, said at the trial that the informant testimony was very important and “possibly critical.”

Despite its importance, Judge Williams kept from the jury information that the second informant had admitted privately that he had lied.

The second informant, Leo Zendejas, testified that Vargas confessed to murdering the woman.

However, Zendejas’ attorney, Joseph Gutierrez, reported to the court that Zendejas had told him privately that Vargas had never said any such thing.

Vargas’ attorney then wanted to call Zendejas’ attorney as a witness to discredit Zendejas, but the judge wouldn’t let him. Zendejas had objected to his lawyer testifying, claiming that any statement he made to his own lawyer was protected by the doctrine of lawyer-client confidentiality. Judge Williams agreed.

Williams later appointed Sarkis, the private investigator, to look into the conviction on behalf of Vargas’ appellate lawyer, James R. McGrath. McGrath recently filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Williams’ court, seeking his client’s freedom on the basis of Cisneros’ recantation. A hearing on the petition has not yet been scheduled.

In a second case that resulted in a life term, Cisneros testified he was in a hospital jail ward in February, 1985, when Donald Clayton Massengill was brought in for treatment of seizures from heroin withdrawal.

Massengill had been arrested the day before on suspicion of murdering a woman who had supplied him with heroin and housing in exchange for his services as an escort. Police said Massengill had already confessed to them that he had killed his landlady with a machete. Police also had a witness to the killing--someone who also worked for the landlady.

Enter Cisneros. Cisneros testified at Massengill’s trial that Massengill did not exactly confess to killing his landlady; he confessed instead to murdering a male dope dealer with a machete.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Burton Schneirow contended in an interview that Massengill distorted his story of the murder because admitting that he killed his landlady would have sounded wimpy.

Cisneros’ account, Schneirow said, “showed a macho type of guy who was too embarrassed to tell what he really did but was bragging about some phony thing.”

In his recantation, Cisneros said that two Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detectives, whose names he could not recall, had supplied him with that story--a charge that sheriff’s homicide Capt. Robert Grimm denied.

Alhambra Police Detective Jim Varga, who also investigated the case, suggested that Cisneros’ recantation didn’t make sense. Varga suggested that if police had decided to plant information, they would have planted the correct information--that Massengill had killed his landlady.

Questioned Friday about the apparent illogic, Cisneros said: “I don’t know what the logic of it is. That’s what they told me to say. . . . They pulled me out of here and took me back to court. I got on the stand and they convicted him. They told me my statements helped convict him.”

Cisneros also testified at that trial that Massengill told him he had arranged for the killing of a witness against him.

Massengill’s appellate attorney, Sharon Wrubell, said she thought that was particularly damaging and may have helped the jury conclude that Massengill was capable of the planning necessary for a first-degree murder.

“There was a real question here” whether the killing of the landlady was first-degree murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter, the appellate lawyer said. “If the jury had believed that because of drugs or alcohol that Massengill could not form malice aforethought and specific intent to kill, they could have found him guilty of manslaughter.”

Massengill is serving a term of 26 years to life for first-degree murder.

Wrubell said she is weighing an attempt to reopen the case, although previous appeals have been denied.

In a third trial, Cisneros said Friday he lied at the behest of Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives when he testified that he heard James Darrell Shortt confess to a murder while both were on a jail bus en route to a court in Norwalk.

Cisneros said that he could not recall the detectives’ names but that they visited him in jail a day after the bus trip.

“They said they’ve been trying to get Jim Shortt on that case and they checked to see who was on that bus and then they found me,” he related. “They came and they showed me some paper work. They told me what went down and they told me what to testify to.”

Shortt, whose two co-defendants also testified against him, was convicted of murdering a man he kidnaped and robbed and was sentenced to prison for life without possibility of parole. Cisneros also testified at the preliminary hearing for Harold Hall, who is awaiting one trial for two murders and a second for five more.

Cisneros testified that Hall admitted to him in a courthouse holding cell that he had killed a girl in his neighborhood.

In his recantation, Cisneros said that Hall only told him he knew some things about the girl’s death.

Cisneros said he and another veteran informant, Willie Battle, conspired with Los Angeles police detectives to make up Hall’s confession.

Battle has told The Times previously that he has always testified truthfully.

Cisneros said in the recantation that Battle called Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Arneson from jail. “We told him what we knew. And they changed the statements around to where it suited them, and we made a case,” Cisneros said.

“They told us what to say,” he said, “that Harold Hall and his boys picked up the girl, took her to the alley, raped her and killed her and set her legs in a funny position.”

Cisneros added: “When it came down to it, they (the authorities) screwed me and gave Willie Battle the deal. All I got out of it was $25 and cigarettes now and then.”

Court records show that Battle indeed got a deal. Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick Dixon told Superior Court Judge David Horowitz that he would recommend leniency--”the main reason being that the defendant is a witness in a case I am prosecuting against Harold Hall.” Horowitz then sentenced Battle to two years in prison for robbery, although the judge told Battle: “I believe you were facing . . . around 15 years in the state prison on this case. And given your record, it was probably amply justified to give you such a severe sentence.”

Informed of Cisneros’ allegations, Arneson declined to comment, noting that Hall is still awaiting trial. Arneson’s then-partner did not respond to a written request by The Times for comment.

In the last case in which he has recanted, Cisneros testified at the preliminary hearing of Martin Victor Ramirez, who was accused of beating a neighbor to death in what police said was a gang-retaliation attack.

In his recantation, Cisneros said Los Angeles Police Officer Bill Jones told him to lie and say that Ramirez had confessed at a jail hospital.

Jones vehemently denied the charge.

Ramirez was never brought to trial. The district attorney’s office elected to try his alleged accomplice before him. When two trials of the alleged accomplice ended in hung juries, both Ramirez and the alleged accomplice were offered deals. The alleged accomplice pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in return for a sentence of three years which, when time for good behavior was computed, he had already served.

Ramirez pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and got three years, which he too had already served while awaiting trial.

The LAPD’s internal affairs division said it wants to talk to Cisneros about his allegations.

In another case, Cisneros said he witnessed jailhouse informants conspire to frame a Compton man for murder.

Kevin Dykes had been arrested for possessing rock cocaine, and was placed in a part of the jail reserved for informants for his own protection, because he had told police he had witnessed a friend’s murder.

However, Dykes’ cellmates, who were veteran informants, told police and later testified that Dykes confessed to murdering his friend.

Cisneros said Dykes had in fact stuck to his story that he was merely a witness, and that the informants had turned it around.

Cisneros’ account, however, was called into question by his statement to the private detective, as reported in a transcript: “I was there when Kevin Dykes told the story. He told them . . . he saw a murder. He saw someone get killed--shot.”

The problem was that the victim in the Dykes case had been stabbed to death.

The Times did not tell Cisneros of this problem at first. When he was asked on Friday what happened in the Dykes case, Cisneros told The Times that Dykes had said the victim had been stabbed.

Asked again if Dykes had said the victim had been stabbed, he repeated that that was the case.

Then he was told that the transcript quoted him as having used the word “shot.” He looked puzzled and responded emphatically, “Not with Dykes.”

Dykes was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 24 years to life. A hearing on his bid for a new trial, based on allegations that informants lied, is set for Tuesday in Superior Court.

BACKGROUND

Jailhouse informants are typically career criminals who claim to have heard confessions of other inmates, then try to trade their information for leniency. At any given time, Los Angeles County jails hold between 50 and 100 of them. For years, defense attorneys suspected that they fabricated confessions, but could not prove it. Then, nearly a year ago, one of them, Leslie Vernon White, demonstrated for his jailers that he could convincingly fake the murder confession of an inmate he had never met. Using a jail phone, he posed as a policeman to gather inside information about the murder from law enforcement agencies, then arranged a phony record to show that he had briefly shared a cell with the inmate whose confession he claimed to have heard. The demonstration led to a vast reduction in use of informants by county prosecutors and a state law requiring that juries be told to view informant testimony with suspicion, and has left a Los Angeles County Grand Jury investigation in limbo since the panel fired its special counsel, retired California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus, in a flap over his performance. Before his ouster, Kaus said the probe could lead to indictments of “a few people.”