Zuma Beach Killing Allegations Shock Hometown of 3 Suspects

Growing up amid the arid Pueblo Indian reservations and stark, silent mesas surrounding this, his hometown, 17-year-old Jason Alexander spoke longingly of someday visiting California.

“California,” his father recalled Saturday, “was a dream.”

It was a dream that, according to authorities, became a nightmare for a young man who had dropped out of high school and drifted into trouble.

Alexander was one of three teen-age runaways from Pojoaque identified Saturday as having allegedly stabbed to death a 43-year-old Northridge woman at Zuma Beach in Malibu on May 28.

Investigators believe that the youths went to Southern California by bus in late May to avoid a burglary investigation. After a brief stay in Los Angeles, they allegedly accosted and stabbed saleswoman Jacqueline Kirkham in a public restroom, taking her purse and car in order to return to New Mexico.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives said they plan to seek murder charges against Alexander, who turned 17 Saturday, and the friends who accompanied him to California--Michael Lorretto and Guillermo Bustos, both 16. All three teen-agers are being held at the Santa Fe Juvenile Detention Center on burglary charges or probation violation.

The three were arrested Wednesday by New Mexico State Police after troopers discovered the dead woman’s car on a highway north of Santa Fe. Police said the suspects had tried to sell the car to another group of teen-agers, who wrecked the vehicle during a test-drive and abandoned it.

Several parents of the suspects said Saturday that they were having difficulty coming to terms with the gravity of the accusations, which have stunned the roughly 2,000 residents of Pojoaque, a clannish but otherwise nondescript town of adobe houses and mobile homes scattered throughout arroyos and bisected by U.S. 285.

Pojoaque residents are accustomed to hearing on radio and television about sordid big-city crimes in far-off places. But they found it hard to fathom that three of their teen-agers are suspected of a killing hundreds of miles away.

“Everybody is shocked because this is a small town,” said Andy Claverani, 18, a cousin of Lorretto.

The shock was greatest for the parents themselves.

Richard Alexander, 45, a tall, heavyset man who owns a small sand and gravel company, said that when he visited his son at the detention center, “At first he was depressed and crying.” The elder Alexander said that his son told him: “‘Dad, I promise you I didn’t do it.’ ”

As a team of Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives fanned out Saturday throughout Pojoaque and nearby Santa Fe to gather evidence, local residents described the three youths as having been friends since grade school who played together on Little League teams.

The boys often could be found at dusk playing basketball at a hoop set up in front of Guillermo Bustos’ trailer at the Butterfly Springs mobile home park.

“They were my kids--as well as Guillermo,” Arlene Bustos said. “I treated them all the same. They would have a game out there and run in one by one to get drinks of water.”

The youths had attendance problems at local schools, parents conceded. Bustos had not shown up for class several weeks before the slaying and Alexander had already dropped out of school, his father said.

Several of Bustos’ cousins interviewed Saturday said the three friends were known as troublemakers who knocked around town wearing heavy-metal T-shirts, drinking beer and starting fights.

According to Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Deputy Billy Martinez, all three youths were aware that they were under suspicion for the May 10 burglary of a local tavern, the El Rancho bar. At least $2,600 in cash and three cases of beer were taken. Martinez said he was about to make an arrest when the youths disappeared.

The bar’s owner, Dan Quintana, said that on Friday, Richard Alexander, a close friend, stopped in and apologized for his son. “The reason he said they did it was because they were drunk,” Quintana said.

In the weeks before the Zuma Beach murder, several friends of the suspects said they had been talking about leaving New Mexico.

“He (Lorretto) was telling me he was going to go to California,” said Angel Lorretto, 13, the suspect’s cousin. “I said, ‘Don’t get into trouble.’ He said: ‘I won’t.’ ”

Richard Alexander said that when his son returned from California, he described it as a place where the people are “cold and mean.” His dreams of the good life in California apparently had died.

“I’m going to straighten out,” Alexander said his son told him. The elder Alexander said he replied: “I hope so.

“The other day, I had all three boys with me,” the father said. “I was preaching to them, ‘You’ve got to keep your nose clean.’ ”