Guatemalan Revenge Trail Ends in Valley Court : Crime: A 21-year-old man pleads no contest to manslaughter in death of countryman who allegedly killed his relatives in a village near El Salvador.

A tale of international revenge killings over a five-year period has come to an apparent end here, with the settlement of a Superior Court case.

Elmer Orellana, 21, facing life in prison for the 1990 North Hollywood killing of a fellow countryman who allegedly massacred seven members of his family in Guatemala, pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter.

In return for the plea, prosecutors agreed not to seek a sentence of more than 11 years in state prison, said Orellana’s attorney, Gerson S. Horn. Sentencing is set for April 5 in San Fernando Superior Court.

Horn said the settlement agreement, reached quietly earlier this month, was “the best we could do.”

“He was guilty of something, but the question was, what was he guilty of?” Horn said. “We’re still hopeful that he could be sentenced to probation or sent to a youth authority facility.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth L. Barshop could not be reached for comment Monday.

Horn said Orellana is eligible to serve part of his sentence in a youth facility because Orellana was 16 when the Jan. 25, 1990, slaying in North Hollywood occurred.

Among the many twists in this case, Orellana’s age was in question because when he first entered the U.S. in 1987 he used various identifications that made him older than his real age. He was arrested several times for misdemeanor offenses, each time using a different alias.

Finally, Orellana produced a birth certificate and passport to prove his true age.

A juvenile court commissioner ruled March 15 that Orellana should be tried as an adult rather than a juvenile, in part because of the “sophistication” Orellana displayed in using the fake identifications.

Orellana, through his attorney, maintained that his father forced him to accompany him to kill Francisco Guillermo Noguera in 1990. After his father fired two shotgun blasts into Noguera, Orellana said his father ordered him to shoot Noguera as well. Orellana fired twice from a handgun, but neither shot hit Noguera, the attorney said.

Noguera and other men allegedly participated in the 1985 massacre of Orellana’s paternal grandparents, his mother, uncle, aunt and two teen-aged cousins in a Guatemalan village near the El Salvador border.

The chain of violence goes back further, authorities said. Noguera and the men allegedly killed the family after Orellana’s father killed a friend of Noguera’s.

Orellana’s father had tracked Noguera to North Hollywood from Guatemala. After allegedly shooting Noguera, Orellana returned to Guatemala, where a year later he was killed, allegedly by Noguera’s family.

At the juvenile court hearing, a psychiatrist testified that Orellana was suffering from post-traumatic stress as a result of having seen his family massacred.