Police Arrest Murder Suspect, Free Woman

After arresting a suspect in a 5-year-old murder case Thursday, police took the man to his hillside shack near Dodger Stadium, where they found a woman who said she had been held prisoner there and sexually assaulted since June, investigators said.

The woman, 35, was not identified.

She was taken to an undisclosed hospital, where she was reported in good condition, Los Angeles Police Lt. Ken Espiau said.

Juan Miguel Duran, 30, led officers to the makeshift shack in Elysian Park after he was arrested Thursday while walking on Broadway in Chinatown. He told officers he had to go home to “let someone out.”

Officers broke down the door to the padlocked shack, where they found the woman, Espiau said. Investigators said she was not bound, adding that they had not determined why she had not been able to escape.

Espiau said detectives had not determined how the woman was abducted.

The shack, which sits on a steep hillside across the street from the U.S. Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Training Center at 1700 Stadium Way, is hidden from view by heavy vegetation. It has neither plumbing nor electricity.

Officers arrested Duran after a computer linked his fingerprints to the February, 1986, slaying of Ester Quan, 68, who was killed by an intruder at her home in the 800 block of North Hill Street, detectives said.

Espiau said Duran was booked on suspicion of murder at the Parker Center Jail. He also is a suspect in a series of recent Chinatown-area “hot prowl” burglaries, in which an intruder and residents are in the home at the same time.

The lieutenant said Duran may be responsible for other crimes against elderly women in Chinatown, including at least one attempted rape, two residential robberies and a burglary.

Police asked victims of such crimes who may have not reported them out of fear to contact Central Division detectives at (213) 485-2671.