Suspects in Van Nuys Slayings Sought Abroad : Crime: Police believe illegal immigrants are responsible for seven unrelated killings in the Van Nuys area. A detective is assigned to locate them in Mexico or Central America.

Struggling with a 67% increase in murders in the Van Nuys area, Los Angeles police have assigned a detective to track an unusually high number of suspected killers who have fled the area to their homelands in Mexico and El Salvador.

The number of murders this year in the police division that includes Van Nuys, Panorama City and Sherman Oaks was 25 through last week. Through the same point last year there were 15 murders in the division.

Troubling to police administrators is that 10 of this year’s cases remain open without an arrest. Police said that in seven of those cases they believe they know the killer’s identity. The suspects, all illegal immigrants, have not been arrested because investigators believe they have fled across the border to their native countries.

“In looking down the list of this year’s cases, it became obvious that we had a pattern,” said Lt. Warren Knowles, commander of the Van Nuys Division detective bureau. “We had a high number of cases in which the suspects had come from across the border. And our information was that they might have gone back across the border.”

Last year, there were no murder cases in Van Nuys in which the killers fled to foreign countries, police said. The sharp increase this year prompted Knowles last week to assign Detective Thomas Gattegno to work full time tracking the fugitives in an effort to clear the backlog of open cases.

“We have become inundated with these kinds of cases,” Gattegno said. “In effect, they are solved cases, but we have to continue to work them. It takes away from the work on the real unsolved cases.”

Though the seven cases might be an unusual number for the Van Nuys Division, police said, it is not unusual for a large number of criminals to flee across the border. Los Angeles has a huge immigrant population and is about 150 miles from the border, they said.

Four years ago, the department formed the Foreign Prosecution Unit, a four-officer squad that files criminal cases in countries that agree to prosecute their citizens for crimes committed in the United States. Already this year, the unit has filed 30 Los Angeles murder cases in Mexico and Central America.

Gattegno said he will work with the Foreign Prosecution Unit, but it is unlikely that he will have to leave the San Fernando Valley. Each of the suspects he is hoping to track is believed to have friends and relatives in the Valley who could provide information leading to their locations in the other countries.

If Gattegno locates the suspects, he will pass the information to the Foreign Prosecution Unit. Already, through intercepted mail and interviews with some acquaintances, Gattegno said, he has learned the general locations of most of the suspects.

They are:

* Jorge Fonseca, 23, charged with the Oct. 7 shooting of 25-year-old Abel Acosta in Van Nuys. Fonseca is believed to have fled to Tetcula, Mexico, after the shooting.

* Roberto Valencia Lopez, 36, charged in the July 25 shooting of Luis Chavez, 25, of Van Nuys. He is suspected of fleeing to Rancho Zamora in Michoacan, Mexico.

* Jose Edgardo Ventura, 19, charged in the death of George Huck, 20, during a June 14 drive-by shooting in front of a Van Nuys bar. Police believe Ventura returned to his native El Salvador.

* Gabriel Lucio Munoz, 22, charged with killing Berta Hevia, 45, his girlfriend, during a March 30 shooting in their Sherman Oaks apartment. Police believe he might have fled to Nayarit, Mexico.

* Mariano Silva Rodriguez, 44, charged in the March 18 shooting death of Abraham Estrada, 36, on Raymer Street near North Hollywood. Police believe the suspect might be in Michoacan.

* Antonio Castellon Godoy, 26, charged with the Jan. 28 shooting death of Jose Delgadillo, 25, in the parking lot of a Van Nuys bar. Police believe he fled to an unknown area of Mexico.

* A man whose name has not been confirmed who is being sought in the Sept. 29 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Sergio Romero behind an apartment building in the 7500 block of Woodman Avenue. No charges have been filed because detectives are attempting to confirm his identity. Police believe that he is in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Though bilingual, Gattegno said, he has had difficulty culling information on the suspects from the Valley Latino community. He said many who knew the suspects might be illegal immigrants and therefore reluctant to talk to police for fear of being deported. But he stressed that he is interested in information on the murder suspects, not on the immigration status of those providing the information.

“We are trying to build information on the suspects’ lives here, their circle of friends,” Gattegno said. “We think that may lead to where they are now.”

The tracing of each suspect is required because although Mexican authorities often work with the Police Department’s Foreign Prosecution Unit, they will not take action until their Los Angeles counterparts can provide a suspect’s location.

In most cases, an address is not required, but “you can’t just say Rancho Zamora,” Gattegno said. “That’s like saying Los Angeles. We have to provide more information.”

Although an extradition treaty exists between Mexico and the United States, Mexican authorities rarely extradite Mexican citizens. Instead, they prosecute those who have committed crimes in the United States.

Under that procedure, if Gattegno locates any of the suspects in the Van Nuys Division murders and they are arrested in Mexico, the Foreign Prosecution Unit will translate case reports, witness affidavits and other evidence in Spanish and turn it over to prosecutors south of the border.

Detective Gilberto Moya of the Foreign Prosecution Unit said the arrest procedure in Mexico usually works this way:

After Los Angeles police provide the location where a suspect is believed to be living, Mexican police quietly attempt to confirm that the wanted person is there. If the location of the suspect is confirmed, the Mexican authorities usually wait until a detective from the Foreign Prosecution Unit arrives with case affidavits before moving in to make an arrest. If it is believed the suspect might leave the location, the Mexicans occasionally make arrests before the Los Angeles detectives bring the documents.

In the past four years, about 100 Los Angeles murder cases have been filed in foreign countries, primarily Mexico and Central American nations but including one in France. About half of the suspects have been convicted and sentenced to prison in their homelands for murders that occurred in Los Angeles, authorities said.

Of the five divisions in the Valley, Moya said, Van Nuys has used the Foreign Prosecution Unit most frequently. By comparison, in the Foothill Division, which includes the heavily Latino area of Pacoima, detectives have not had any murder cases this year in which suspects have fled to Mexico.

Moya praised the assignment of a detective to try to streamline the process of finding suspects south of the border.

“It is not a new procedure, but they are centralizing the activities on several cases,” he said. “It’s a good step. Hopefully, it will lead to some arrests.”