2 Men Arrested in Torture Killing

After three years of investigative dead-ends, authorities have arrested two men in connection with the torture slaying of a Buena Park 18-year-old who was bound, gagged, beaten and hanged by the neck before his body was dumped into a waterway leading into Long Beach Harbor.

Shane Patrick Perry, 20, of La Palma surrendered to authorities Thursday in connection with the February 1993 slaying of Carlos Salanova, a Buena Park resident and former John F. Kennedy High School student.

Christopher David Scott, 21, of Buena Park was arrested Tuesday, and prosecutors filed murder charges against him the following day.

Scott faces charges of murder with the special circumstance of torture, which could make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted, La Palma Police Capt. Vince Giampa said.

Perry, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, has not yet been formally charged, but similar charges are contemplated, Giampa said.

The motive behind the killing remains unclear, police said, adding that they hope to make another arrest within 24 hours. It is possible that even more arrests will be made as the investigation continues, Giampa said.

According to police, Scott allegedly brought the victim to a “drug party” attended by nearly a dozen teenagers at a residence in the 5000 block of Cadiz Circle in La Palma. There, Giampa said, Salanova was confronted at gunpoint.

His attackers gagged him and bound his hands and feet with duct tape before beating and torturing him, police said. A rope was then tied around Salanova’s neck and he was hanged. His throat was also slashed.

On March 1, 1993, Salanova’s body was taken to Long Beach where it was tossed into the Cerritos Channel from an isolated area off Terminal Island, police said. A tugboat crew found his body floating in Long Beach Harbor more than a week later. It would be another week before he was identified through fingerprints.

Long Beach police originally handled the investigation and after some months linked the slaying to the address on Cadiz Circle, Giampa said.

“We kept running into one dead end after another until February of this year, when we stumbled onto additional information that was helpful to us,” Giampa said.

He declined to elaborate on the evidence that led Long Beach police to La Palma, as well as the new evidence that led to this week’s arrests, saying only that the latest evidence came from recent interviews with those who attended the party and relatives of the victim and suspects.

Giampa also declined to discuss what led detectives to Scott, who is scheduled to be arraigned in Municipal Court in Fullerton on June 14.

This week’s arrest was not Scott’s first brush with the law. According to court records, in December 1993 he pleaded guilty to felony burglary and was sentenced to two years in prison.

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Times correspondent Jeff Kass contributed to this report.