Body Found Beneath Floor of Warehouse

Acting on information provided by a man already sentenced to life in prison for torturing and raping a woman in a North Hollywood warehouse, police dug up an unidentified body in the same warehouse Wednesday morning, authorities said.

Attorneys involved in the case said police obtained a search warrant for the building at 12024 Sherman Way after detectives interviewed James Thomas Hernandez on Tuesday.

After being convicted in November of abducting and torturing a woman friend in March, the 31-year-old Hernandez was sentenced last week to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Throughout the trial and again last Thursday when he was sentenced, prosecutors said Hernandez was a suspect in the disappearance of his live-in girlfriend, Pamela Hensley, a woman in her mid-20s who was last seen in late 1992.

Police acknowledged that they went to the warehouse in search of a body, but they refused to confirm that Hernandez had guided them to Hensley’s body. Other than saying she was from another state, authorities also refused to provide details about Hensley.

The grisly discovery was made in a warehouse where Hernandez tortured and sexually assaulted a 25-year-old woman March 27, about four months after Hensley disappeared.

The victim in the torture case testified that during her three-hour ordeal, she heard Hernandez digging in another part of the building, and said he threatened to kill her and bury her there.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald H. (Mike) Carroll, the top prosecutor in Van Nuys, confirmed that prosecutors interviewed Hernandez Tuesday “and on the basis of information collected, a search was conducted.”

Craig Robinson, a Van Nuys-based defense attorney who defended Hernandez during his trial, also confirmed the interview, but refused to discuss specifics, citing attorney-client confidentiality.

“Anyone can put two and two together,” Robinson said. “After a conversation between my client and the police, a body was found the next day . . . a third-grader could figure it out.”

District attorney’s spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said that “as a result of today’s discovery, we anticipate further court proceedings” in the Hernandez case. Hernandez expects to plead guilty to a charge of voluntary manslaughter, Robinson said, and he expects to receive the maximum sentence of 11 years in prison--to no effect since he is already sentenced to life behind bars.

“This disposition was so that the victim’s family could go on in peace, so they can bury her,” Robinson said without specifically naming the victim.

Police, coroner’s investigators and Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Berman gathered about 8:30 Wednesday morning at the warehouse, which is now home to a clothing manufacturing business.

Employees of A K Fashions, which has occupied the building since June, dismantled furniture and emptied an office next to a loading dock.

When investigators pulled back the carpeting in the office, they exposed white vinyl flooring with tiles missing in the center of the room. Concrete was visible through the three-foot-square opening.

Los Angeles Department of Public Works employees used a jackhammer to break through the cement.

“We had to go through about six inches of concrete to get to the dirt portion and then down several feet in dirt,” in a three-hour excavation, said Los Angeles Police Lt. John Rogers.

Berman described the body as “mummified.” Rogers said it was “skeletal.”

Both men refused to guess how long the remains had been in the ground and said they would not comment on the identity of the apparent victim until an autopsy is conducted and dental records checked.

The owner and about 10 employees of A K Fashions declined to comment on the new police investigation.

One worker, who declined to give his name, said employees learned of the torture session in the office bathroom from detectives who came to the building before Hernandez’s trial.

A Superior Court jury convicted Hernandez of luring a female friend to the warehouse, where he clubbed her with a baseball bat before torturing her with electric shocks to her breasts and repeatedly sexually assaulting her. He was found guilty on 15 felony counts, including torture, mayhem and kidnaping for ransom.

Hernandez worked for the firm that managed the Sherman Way building and a number of other warehouses. He did odd jobs in the buildings and had the key to a number of locations, according to testimony in his trial.

The victim in that case, who was bound with duct tape and rope in a bathroom, was able to convince Hernandez to take her to a pay phone to call her mother to give him money, then escaped.

Hernandez was arrested the next day.

In the bathroom in the warehouse, there is still a piece of duct tape wrapped around one pipe and holes are still visible where police said Hernandez had installed bolts so he could tie up the woman.

In sentencing Hernandez, Judge Michael J. Farrell called the torture incident “one of the most horrible situations I have ever seen.”