Suspect in ’86 Van Nuys Killing Arrested in N.Y. : Crime: L.A. detective tracks down man wanted in stabbing death to Queens, where he was working as a janitor.

More than eight years after a man was stabbed to death in Van Nuys, a Los Angeles police detective has tracked down the alleged killer in New York City.

The suspect, Obdulio Martinez, 32, who had initially fled to Guatemala, was living in Far Rockaway, Queens, where he had been working as a janitor, sharing an apartment with his wife and 4-year-old daughter. His family was unaware that he was a fugitive, Police Department Detective Phil Morritt said.

He said Martinez was taken in for questioning Friday and placed under arrest later the same day after authorities verified his identity.

“He was shocked when we first approached him,” Morritt said. “He was in total denial during the initial investigation, but that changed.”

Martinez waived his right to an extradition hearing and was returned Monday to Los Angeles. He is expected to be arraigned today in Van Nuys Superior Court on a murder charge.

Morritt said Martinez is accused of fatally stabbing Osmin Alfaro, 40, during a drunken brawl. Alfaro’s body was found Dec. 5, 1986, in a parking lot behind a building in the 13000 block of Raymer Street in Van Nuys.

After the slaying, a warrant was issued for Martinez’s arrest, but authorities said he fled to Guatemala, where he went into hiding. The case languished until it was reassigned to Morritt two years ago.

Aided by the FBI, Morritt said in February, 1994, he contacted Guatemalan authorities, who told him in August that Martinez had returned in 1989 to the Los Angeles area, where he was living with a brother.

But Morritt, a former New York City police officer, said the information was jumbled and that after repeatedly reviewing the case he began to suspect that Martinez had actually gone to Long Island to be near his brother.

Morritt contracted a Nassau, N. Y., police detective who began working the case from Long Island.

“The problem was, we had no fingerprints on him,” Morritt said. “We only had one photograph and it was an old DMV.”

But six months later the Nassau detective produced an address in Far Rockaway. Morritt boarded a plane Thursday and the next day nabbed the suspect, who appeared heavier and older than in his earlier driver’s license picture.

“I knew I had the right guy,” Morritt said.

Martinez’s arrest came just a month after Police Department detectives at the North Hollywood Division got a break in a 23-year-old murder investigation that they reopened during a lull.

Omer Harland Gallion, a 65-year-old retired aerospace worker, was arrested March 21 and charged with killing his mother-in-law more than two decades ago.

The body of Catherine Marion Halgren, 62, was found Sept. 16, 1972, in her North Hollywood home in the 4300 block of Cahuenga Boulevard. Gallion was ordered to stand trial for murder last month after a police detective testified that Gallion’s daughter told police that her father admitted to her 23 years ago that he committed the crime.