Suspect in 1983 Van Nuys Killing Arrested in Mexico

A construction engineer living openly in a small Mexican town while he was sought by Los Angeles police has been arrested on charges he shot his brother-in-law to death seven years ago in Van Nuys, Los Angeles police said Monday.

Gregorio V. Huerta, a 41-year-old Mexican citizen who fled to the town of Jalpa in the state of Zacatecas, was arrested Friday night after stepping out of his home to talk to a man who said he wanted to hire Huerta for a construction project.

The man Huerta thought was a customer actually was Los Angeles Police Detective George Padilla, a member of the department’s foreign prosecution unit. Huerta was taken into custody by the Mexican state judicial police and is being held in Zacatecas without bail.

Huerta was sought in connection with the slaying of Van Nuys resident Gary Beresford after a dispute on July 18, 1983. Police had searched for Huerta ever since Beresford, 34, was shot in an apartment on Oxnard Street. The reason for the dispute has never been determined, police said.

Detective James Vojtecky, head of the Van Nuys homicide squad, said Huerta told his arresting officers that “he had been expecting that one day the police would come.”

“He wasn’t in hiding,” Vojtecky said. “He was living a normal life. There is a good possibility he was living there the whole time.

Because Mexico does not extradite its citizens for trial in the United States, Huerta will be tried there for the murder, officials said. Los Angeles police have provided federal prosecutors in Mexico with translated crime reports and other evidence.

Soon after the slaying, information from witnesses and other evidence led detectives to search for Huerta, the brother of Beresford’s wife. An arrest warrant was issued charging him with murder.

Investigators believed that Huerta had fled to his native Mexico, and his whereabouts there were unknown. Under department policy, unsolved homicides are reviewed annually for new leads and this year detectives recontacted witnesses and others who knew Huerta.

“Once a year the case was pulled out and the detectives worked it,” said Vojtecky. “This time, certain witnesses said they believed Huerta was residing in this small town in Mexico.”

Detectives obtained an address where Huerta was receiving mail in Jalpa and learned that he was working there as a construction engineer, police said.

Last week, Padilla and two other Los Angeles detectives went to Jalpa. At the address Huerta used as a mail drop, Padilla posed as a man looking to hire him for a construction project and was directed to another house where he could find Huerta.

The suspect was arrested at the second address Friday night.