OXNARD : Murder Count Filed in 17-Year-Old Case

Ventura County prosecutors filed a murder charge Monday against a former Oxnard man who allegedly confessed last week that he burned a man near an Oxnard bar nearly 17 years ago.

The Ventura County district attorney’s office filed a single charge of murder against Richard Frank Mayturena, 46, who turned himself in last week to Riverside County Sheriff’s officers in Moreno Valley.

Mayturena confessed that he had gotten into a fight with 24-year-old Claude William Bloomquist II outside a bar on Ventura Road on July 16, 1976, police said.

Police said that Mayturena, now a Riverside County resident who lived in Oxnard at the time, admitted he then set Bloomquist’s car on fire while Bloomquist was inside it.

Bloomquist’s body was found in the car, and the Ventura County coroner’s office ruled he had died from the fire and smoke and soot inhalation. At the time, Oxnard police investigated the death as possibly suspicious but concluded it had probably been accidental.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald C. Janes said that, even without the alleged confession, the district attorney’s office is prepared to prove that the crime occurred.

Mayturena appeared briefly in Municipal Court on Monday as his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Howard Asher, asked to have arraignment postponed.

Asher declined to comment on the charge, saying, “I don’t know anything about the case except it’s a very old case.”

Mayturena is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail at Ventura County Jail pending arraignment, which now is scheduled for March 15.