ANAHEIM : Charge Dismissed in 1981 Murder

An Orange County Superior Court judge has tossed out a murder charge against a man who said he lived openly in Southern California for eight years while authorities had a warrant for his arrest as one of the alleged gunmen in an Anaheim shooting.

Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald said Tuesday that this was the first time in his memory that a homicide case had to be dismissed because local law enforcement officials “had dropped the ball.”

Fitzgerald’s ruling followed a state Court of Appeal ruling last spring that the delay between the crime and the arrest of Jose Manuel Bueno, 47, might have made it impossible for him to defend himself against a murder charge.

The charge, which could have resulted in a life sentence for Bueno, was dismissed Sept. 6.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eric W. Snethen said he could not quarrel with the judge’s decision to drop the charge. But he contended the district attorney’s office and local police agencies don’t have enough investigators to track down all suspects, even those named in murder warrants.

Currently, Snethen said, his office has murder warrants out for 105 suspects.

“We need two full-time investigators just to work the homicide warrants,” he said, adding that because of the budget crunch, his office has no investigator who works full time on tracking down suspects named in murder warrants.

At one point, Snethen said, law enforcement officials were convinced that Bueno--wanted in the Feb. 5, 1981, shooting death of Humberto Perez, 42, of Placentia--had fled to Mexico.

Bueno was arrested in 1989 in an unrelated drug investigation by federal agents. During the 1980s, Bueno claimed, he lived openly in Montclair and Riverside and had a valid driver’s license. He even applied for immigration amnesty in 1988.

Defense attorneys contended that because of the time lapse, records that could have shown Bueno’s whereabouts the night of the murder had been destroyed, making a defense impossible.

In 1982, an Orange County Superior Court jury convicted Genaro Gonzales Rios, 52, of first-degree murder of Perez, a Mexican national, and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Another defendant in the case was acquitted.

Fitzgerald said local law enforcement officials relied too heavily on agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency to find Bueno.