DeHoyos Says Rage at Firing Made Him Kill : Courts: Taking stand for first time in trial’s ‘sanity phase,’ murderer says he wanted to kill the restaurant manager who dismissed him, not young girl. He describes crime in detail.

Convicted murderer Richard Lucio DeHoyos told jurors Wednesday that he killed and sodomized a 9-year-old Santa Ana girl while in a rage over losing his job at a fast-food restaurant earlier that day.

Taking the witness stand for the first time since the 1989 slaying of Nadia Puente, DeHoyos, 35, said he wanted to kill the Taco Bell manager who fired him, but instead took his anger out on Nadia. He said he later apologized to her lifeless body.

“I wanted to kill (manager) Mary Scott, not Nadia Puente,” DeHoyos said. “She just happened to get in the way, and I killed her.”

An Orange County Superior Court jury on Monday convicted DeHoyos of kidnaping, sexually assaulting and then murdering Nadia. A 1991 jury also convicted DeHoyos and recommended that he be sentenced to death, but a judge overturned the verdict because of jury misconduct.

Defense attorney Milton C. Grimes has told jurors that DeHoyos suffers from a mental condition that causes violent, irrational outbursts and was insane when he attacked Nadia. DeHoyos’ testimony came during the so-called sanity phase of the trial, during which jurors must determine whether DeHoyos was sane when he killed Nadia.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert C. Gannon Jr. plans to seek the death penalty if DeHoyos is found sane. If not, DeHoyos could be sent to a mental hospital, Grimes said outside of court.

DeHoyos said he was using cocaine and marijuana, drinking beer and contemplating suicide when he took Nadia to a nearby motel. He said he became furious when the little girl walked into the bathroom while he was taking a bath and saw him naked.

“I got her, like, in a bear hug . . . and told her I was going to punish her for doing that,” said DeHoyos, who said Nadia kicked him when he moved toward her. “We had a scuffle and we ended up falling into the bathtub and I fell on top of her,” he said, adding that he did not have the “power” to get up for several moments.

When he did raise himself up, he saw the girl motionless, he testified.

“She was hanging over the edge. I slipped her whole body into the water and she was lying face down,” DeHoyos said. He “knew something was wrong” when he returned several minutes later to find her still floating face down in the bathtub.

An autopsy showed that Nadia died from the pressure applied to her chest, Gannon said.

Under sometimes heated questioning by Gannon, DeHoyos denied earlier statements to police that he shoved the girl’s head under water to muffle her screams that she wanted to go home.

He told the jury that he then sodomized the girl to make sure that she wasn’t just “playing dead.” Prosecutors, however, say the evidence proves that Nadia was sexually assaulted while still alive.

DeHoyos said he then put her body in a trash can and drove to Griffith Park.

DeHoyos testified that he left the trash can in an area where it would be found quickly so “ants and vultures” wouldn’t eat her. Before leaving her, he said, he removed the lid and lifted the girl’s black-and-blue face so he could view her in the moonlight.

“I told her I was sorry and I’m sorry that I’m going to leave her here and someone will find her soon,” he said.

The day after the slaying, DeHoyos said, he went to the beach with friends. Two days after the slaying, he returned to Griffith Park for a picnic with a female friend but avoided the area where the body was dumped, he said.

During the first trial, DeHoyos shaved his head and eyebrows, frequently barked like a dog and once rampaged through the courtroom. Still with a cleanshaven head, DeHoyos on Wednesday at times appeared distracted, grooming his fingernails. Other times, he grew angry, once pointing at the prosecutor and calling him a liar.

DeHoyos told both attorneys that he could no longer remember many details about the slaying, such as how he coaxed Nadia to enter his car. He told police at the time of his arrest that he had posed as a schoolteacher who needed help carrying books.

DeHoyos also offered bizarre thoughts, apparently intended to boost his insanity defense.

He told the jury that he believed Nadia was between 19 and 25 years of age but later “turned” back into a young girl. He said Nadia would change before his eyes, from being the girl he picked up to the Westminster Taco Bell manager, Mary Scott.