Ventura County Homicide Rate Jumped in ’93 : Crime: The 47 reported killings far exceed the region’s average. But the record is 59 in both 1979 and 1974.

With 47 homicides in 1993, Ventura County’s death toll climbed to the second highest in 14 years and the fourth highest since such records were kept.

Authorities agree that it was an unusually violent 12 months--the average for the previous 17 years was 33.6 slayings--but it was lower than the 48 killings in 1991 and the record-setting 59 in both 1979 and 1974. In 1992, the county had 32 homicides.

“I don’t see this as an indicator of a major rise in crime,” said Craig Stevens, a senior deputy coroner. “It’s just part of the roller coaster. This happened to be a worse year than some others.”

Causes for the killings ranged deep and wide. Robberies, drugs, the economy, poisoned relationships, mental illness and gang loyalties all spurred people to take the lives of others.

“It’s human emotion gone awry, and someone ends up dead because there’s a weapon around,” said Todd Howeth, a deputy public defender. “Small things that used to be solved with fists--people pull out guns and start blasting away.”

Some killings erupted out of petty arguments when words escalated to weapons. Still other homicides simply defy explanation.

“We’re getting more and more cases where it’s a very trivial issue that someone has died over,” said Ventura Police Sgt. Bob Anderson. “I don’t think the average citizen out there has a clue how much violence has become a part of our standard of living in this area.”

Among this year’s 47 homicides, two husbands killed their wives, two workers killed their bosses and, in the worst shooting rampage in county history, an unemployed computer engineer slaughtered four people and wounded four others in less than 15 minutes. Four people died at the hands of police, up from two officer-involved shootings last year.

Sixty-four percent of the victims (30 people) died of bullet wounds--roughly reflecting a 1988 U.S. Department of Justice study finding that 60% of the nation’s homicides involved a firearm.

Another 11 victims were stabbed, four were strangled--all women--and two were bludgeoned.

The homicides took place just about everywhere in the county, with the exception of Simi Valley.

But they were not evenly distributed. Eighty-five percent occurred in the western part of the county and 40% of all the slayings occurred in Oxnard. Ventura and Port Hueneme also had a higher number than in previous years. Ventura had 10 homicides, up from an average of three. And Port Hueneme had five, including the unsolved stranglings of two women and the stabbing of an 87-year-old deaf woman in an apartment complex for senior citizens.

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Among the most sensational of the county’s killings were those in which the victims seemed to have been selected at random.

On Dec. 2, about 11:40 a.m., Alan Winterbourne walked into the Oxnard unemployment office--familiar to him from seven years of job searching--and opened fire.

Terror-filled employees scrambled for cover under their desks, barricaded themselves in offices or ran for their lives out the front door. By the time Winterbourne straightened his jacket and calmly walked out the door, he had fatally wounded Anna Velasco, 42, Phillip Villegas, 43, and Richard Bateman, 65, and injured four others.

“He was methodically going between the aisles firing, emptying shell casings, reloading and firing as he marched through the place,” said Sgt. Chuck Dunham of the Oxnard Police Department.

After fleeing in his car and killing Oxnard Police Detective James O’Brien with a scope-fitted, high-powered rifle, Winterbourne was fatally shot by police outside the Ventura unemployment office.

Another case that captured public attention was the kidnaping and slaying of Kellie O’Sullivan, a 34-year-old Westlake nurse who disappeared while running afternoon errands. Hundreds of volunteers combed the Santa Monica Mountains searching for clues before O’Sullivan’s body was found in a brush-covered canyon 12 days later.

Mark Scott Thornton, 19, is now facing charges of murder, kidnaping, robbery and a special allegation that could send him to the gas chamber for O’Sullivan’s slaying.

(The county coroner’s office does not count O’Sullivan’s death among the county’s homicides because her body was found in Los Angeles County, although the investigation and prosecution are being handled by Ventura County authorities.)

Despite these high-profile cases, police say the majority of the county’s homicide victims died in crimes of passion in which they knew their killers, or in otherwise familiar circumstances.

In Santa Paula, Adriana Meza Alamillo, 21, and her boyfriend, Armando Antonio Cauich, 22, were shot to death in bed allegedly by her estranged husband, Everardo Meza Alamillo. Police believe the husband drank beer in his car while waiting for the boyfriend to come over, then snuck in the back door of the tiny house.

The bodies were discovered when a housemate heard Adriana’s young daughter crying hours later. Police now believe the husband may be out of state.

In another brutal case of domestic violence, JoAnn Linkenauger, 40, was severely beaten and then strangled by her husband, James Michael Linkenauger. He dumped her body in a muddy ravine near Somis.

Investigators found blood spattered throughout three rooms of the home the Linkenaugers shared. Many of the bloodstains had been covered with bleach in a futile attempt to wash them out.

Linkenauger was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

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Here are the rest of the killings that occurred in Ventura County:

* After robbing the Popeye’s Chicken Restaurant in Oxnard, Stephen Gutierrez, 26, was shot to death Jan. 7 by an off-duty Ventura County sheriff’s deputy. Prosecutors said Deputy Roland Ogawa was justified in firing at Gutierrez because he identified himself and because Gutierrez fired at him first.

* Santa Paula resident Alfonso Garza Sanchez, 24, was shot dead in a west Ventura alleyway just before midnight Jan. 29. The investigation is continuing.

* In a killing that stunned the city of Ventura, 17-year-old Jesse Owen Martin Strobel was fatally stabbed in the chest shortly before midnight Jan. 29 as he walked home from a part-time job at his father’s pizzeria. He was found lying on the porch of a house on residential North Catalina Street. Police said in April they had identified a prime suspect, but did not have enough information to make an arrest. A reward fund failed to draw out individuals who knew of the attack first-hand.

* Timothy Morrison, 23, was fatally shot in the chest Feb. 13 after stealing a bottle of wine from a Port Hueneme liquor store. The owner, Shin Ung Kang, followed Morrison from the store, then shot him when he pulled out a knife and lunged at him. Authorities ruled it was self-defense.

* Raul Castillo Nunez, 44, was gunned down the morning of March 13 at the dirt-removal business where he worked in Moorpark. No arrests have been made and the investigation is continuing.

* An argument in a south Oxnard carport erupted into the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Jesus Manriquez Lopez, a seasonal strawberry picker. The investigation is continuing, but police say they have had a difficult time finding suspects or anyone who knew the victim.

* Abel Rodriguez Arjon, 37, bled to death April 24 after Julio Escobar Gonzales, 19, accidentally shot him in the leg with a sawed-off shotgun. The victim, Escobar and several acquaintances had been drinking and passing around the shotgun in a south Oxnard garage. Authorities ruled the shooting accidental.

* Jasper Fitzgerald, 19, died May 14 after being stabbed in the liver and heart with an ice pick outside a party in Ojai. Ryan Dale Burchell, 19, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the slaying. The two men barely knew each other, if they were acquainted at all, and it is unclear what prompted the attack.

* That same day, Rosario De La Cruz, 47, was shot four times in the chest at his Santa Paula home by a former employee. Just before dying, De La Cruz told his wife that Jose Luis Gonzalez, a 23-year-old transient with a history of mental illness, had shot him. Gonzalez is now scheduled to appear in court for a hearing to determine if he is mentally competent to stand trial.

* Tyrone Baker, 24, of Chino was driving home to Los Angeles on May 15 from a concert in Santa Maria when he got into an argument with an acquaintance, 24-year-old Melvin Lamont Braddock of Pasadena. The pair pulled off the freeway in Ventura, where Braddock allegedly shot Baker and left his body on South Garden Street near the Ventura County Fairgrounds. Braddock was arrested, but has since been released. The investigation is continuing.

* Rodolfo Macias, 25, a busboy, was bludgeoned with a crowbar May 25 in his Newbury Park home after arguing with Raul Paul Urquidi about a woman. Urquidi, who lived part-time in the same house with Macias, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison.

* Norma Rodriguez, a 32-year-old mother of two young boys, was strangled to death June 1 in the living room of her small home in Port Hueneme. Police have made no arrests. The case is one of three unsolved homicides in Port Hueneme that are being reviewed by a high-tech unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to see whether they bear similarities to other unsolved crimes.

* Miguel Flores, 18, of Camarillo was killed June 12 during a gang-related gunfight at a birthday party in a quiet Thousand Oaks neighborhood. No charges have been filed in the case.

* Raymond Caballero, 45, was stabbed to death June 18 when a fight inside Oxnard’s Casbah Lounge spilled into the parking lot. Steven Rodriguez, 46, a longtime county maintenance worker, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. Prosecutors said Caballero apparently started the fight, but was driving away from the scene when Rodriguez began striking the victim’s car with a tire iron.

* Beatrice Bellis, an 87-year-old deaf woman, was found stabbed to death June 27 in her apartment at a Port Hueneme senior citizens housing complex. The case remains a mystery to police.

* Port Hueneme’s third unsolved killing occurred Aug. 5 when Cindy Burger, 44, a single woman living alone, was found strangled in her bathtub as her condominium burned in an arson-caused fire.

* Hillario Urriza Corpuz, 44, a security guard, died of a heart attack June 20 as he fought off an intruder in a partially built subdivision in Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood. An autopsy indicated that blunt blows to his face caused major injuries, but were not fatal. Police have no suspects.

* Frank Kish, 32, of Newbury Park was shot in the head and abdomen by his girlfriend’s brother, Todd Richard Love, 27, during an argument June 20. In a 911 emergency call to police, Love screamed eight times to operators that he was going to kill Kish. Love’s attorney later contended the killing was in self-defense. Love was convicted of first-degree murder.

* James Vleck, a 23-year-old drifter, was shot to death Aug. 9 inside a Victorian-style home on Thompson Avenue in Ventura. Police said Vleck had sexually assaulted a 21-year-old woman at knife point earlier in the day, then returned and was confronted by the woman’s boyfriend, 29-year-old Dean Soto. Prosecutors said Vleck was shot when he pulled a switchblade knife and tried to grab Soto’s gun.

* Sidney Jones, 38, was killed in a drive-by shooting Aug. 30, after arguing with a group of men in the parking lot of the Stop ‘N Go market at 1st Street and Rose Avenue in Oxnard. Police said they have identified several suspects, but no one has been prosecuted.

* Constant physical and verbal harassment led 67-year-old Rosario Valenzuela of Oxnard to fatally stab Jose Daniel Garduno Acosta, 46, an accordion player from Mexico, on Aug. 30. Prosecutors said Valenzuela stabbed Acosta, believing the younger man was about to attack him.

* Robert Allen Foster, 41, an El io businessman, was fatally shot at point-blank range Sept. 5 by his employee, Charles W. Bothwell, 23, inside Foster’s Ventura thrift store. Authorities said Foster abused his family and employees under his control. In a plea bargain, Bothwell was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, which would have allowed him to receive probation. But Judge Lawrence Storch sentenced Bothwell to three years in prison, saying prosecutors had already been too lenient by striking a plea bargain that would have allowed him to get probation instead of a prison sentence.

* Miguel Ortiz died Sept. 11 after being stabbed in the shoulder in front of a south Oxnard junior high school during a roadside fight that apparently spilled over from a nearby party. Police later obtained an arrest warrant for Oscar Garcia Segura, but they believe he has fled to Mexico.

* Ruben Hernandez, 21, died Sept. 19 after being wounded in a drive-by shooting that police say appears to have been gang-related. The shooting occurred in the parking lot of the Liquor Cellar on West Channel Islands Boulevard in Oxnard. Police have questioned several people, but no arrests have been made.

* Michael Wayne Mansir, 24, died after being shot in the chest at close range inside his family’s home in a canal-lined Oxnard neighborhood. Police later arrested Hector Garcia II for the Sept. 28 killing. They believe the motive was tied to an armed robbery, in which Garcia is also the suspect, or to ill feelings over a woman Garcia was dating. Garcia, described as a longtime friend of Mansir’s, has been charged with murder and robbery and is awaiting trial.

* Rene Ramirez, 19, died in a drive-by shooting Oct. 4 at an Oxnard coin laundry. Police say it is possible Ramirez was killed in a pay-back for the killing of Ruben Hernandez two weeks earlier. Ramirez and Hernandez belonged to rival gangs. Police are still investigating Ramirez’s death and have made no arrests.

* Four Oxnard police officers shot and killed Nicholas Paul Partee, 35, the night of Oct. 1, after chasing him from Oxnard to Camarillo. Partee allegedly showed up at his estranged wife’s house, in violation of a temporary restraining order, then took off when police tried to stop him at a nearby convenience store. The district attorney’s office is reviewing the police shooting.

* Michael Eugene Carter, 36, was stabbed to death on Oct. 27 during a fracas in Ventura. Carter was walking in an alley near Center and Cedar streets with two friends when he crossed paths with Steve Avila Gastelo, 29, of San Fernando. The four began fighting and Gastelo allegedly stabbed Carter. The case is under review by the district attorney’s office.

* Gerardo Dima, 22, was fatally stabbed when he was swept into a violent Oxnard street brawl he had nothing to do with. Police said Dima had walked outside, barefoot and shirtless on Oct. 31, when someone ran up and stabbed him. Four men, all related to each other but not to the victim, were arrested for the slaying, but all have been released. Police have been unable to prove who killed Dima.

* The remains of Nancy Huter, a Thousand Oaks woman who disappeared more than a year and a half ago, were uncovered Nov. 3 when fire swept across Mugu Lagoon, burning off old brush. Coroner’s officials have ruled her death a homicide, but they have not determined how she died. Huter was reported missing from Malibu Creek State Park when she failed to report to work and missed a Bible study class. The Sheriff’s Department is continuing to investigate her death.

* On Nov. 11, Oxnard and Port Hueneme officers fatally shot Santos Anderson Arias, 23, at a gas station at the corner of Pleasant Valley and Ventura roads. As light rain fell, Arias dared officers to shoot him, then ignored police commands, reached for a shotgun and began to raise it. The incident began when Arias got into a disagreement at a nearby bar, then fired several shotgun blasts at the bar’s back door. The case is still under review by the district attorney.

* Thurman Lamar Jackson’s body was discovered by his girlfriend Nov. 16. He had been shot once in the head. There was no sign of a struggle or break-in to his south Oxnard apartment. Police are still investigating the case.

* Roberto Victor Cardenas Jr., a citizen of Argentina, was fatally shot Nov. 19 outside the El Bohemio Bar in Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood. Police believe Cardenas’s own gun may have been used against him. Police have questioned several people, but have made no arrests.

* Jose Villanueva, 17, was fatally shot Dec. 10 as he allegedly tried to rob an Oxnard western-wear store. The store owner, Jose L. Morales, shot Villanueva when the youth allegedly confronted him with a semiautomatic handgun and demanded cash from the register. The case will be reviewed by the district attorney, but police say it appears to have been self-defense.

* Rodolfo Molina Mora, 27, died of stab wounds to the heart and lung Dec. 11 after fighting with a 16-year-old boy in Fillmore. The youth has been charged with murder. Police will not comment on the motive.

* Paul Martinez, a 21-year-old Whittier man, died after being shot Dec. 18 at the Motel 6 on Johnson Drive in Ventura. Police said the shooting broke out, unexpectedly, after words were exchanged between two groups of people having a party there. Investigators have questioned several people from Oxnard, but no arrests have been made.

* Police in Ventura are puzzled by the death of Erasmo Moro, a 48-year-old Italian national fatally shot during an argument in a carport near his apartment on Scandia Avenue. Moro worked at a pizza takeout business near his apartment. Police are searching for the man with whom Moro argued, but no one has been arrested.

* Before dawn on Christmas, 21-year-old Isaias Guerrero Morales died after being stabbed in the heart, allegedly by his mother’s ex-boyfriend, Jose Socorro Jimenez. According to Morales’ wife, Jimenez came to the family’s Oxnard home about 3 a.m. and began yelling, making threats over his break-up with Moreles’ mother. Morales and Jimenez were walking away from the house when a fight erupted and Jimenez allegedly plunged a knife into Morales’ chest. Jimenez is being held in County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail. No charges have been filed.

* And last Wednesday, the decomposed body of Mika Bissett, 20, was found dumped along a dirt road near Moorpark. Police in Los Angeles said she was strangled Dec. 14 by Michael Dubov, who was living with her in a Venice apartment. Dubov reported her missing Dec. 20, then confessed to the killing Dec. 29 and led authorities to the body. He was booked into Los Angeles Main Jail on suspicion of murder. Bail was set at $1 million.

Homicides in ’93 by City Oxnard: 19 Ventura: 10 Port Hueneme: 5 Thousand Oaks: 3 Moorpark: 2 Santa Paula: 2 Camarillo: 1 Fillmore: 1 Ojai: 1 Unincorporated areas: 2 Other (Woman’s body was found near Moorpark, but authorities believe she was killed in Los Angeles.): 1 Total: 47

Source: Ventura County coroner’s office