County’s 33 Slayings in 1996 Take Grim Toll

There will be no more Christmases and no more new years.

Gabriela Rodriguez will mark no more holidays with her son, 21-year-old Marco Aurelio Rodriguez. On May 5, he was shot to death in a Moorpark robbery.

John Charles Alvez was convicted of the murder and is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He hid in the market where Rodriguez worked until it closed, then he shot the Canoga Park resident twice in the head before robbing the store.

In tearful and moving testimony at Alvez’s sentencing hearing earlier this month, Rodriguez spoke for many as she noted that Marco wasn’t the only victim.

Alvez also destroyed her family.

“Look at what this boy did to us,” she said. “He finished all of us.”

Rodriguez was one of 33 people killed in Ventura County in 1996, according to local law enforcement officials and records kept by the Ventura County coroner’s office.

Some of those people were slain in instances of self-defense or accidents. Others were killed in cold blood--beaten, shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death.

Despite the grim toll, it has been an average year in terms of homicides--not as low as the 20 slayings in 1990 nor as high as the 48 homicides in 1991.

The deaths include two law enforcement officers--Oxnard Police Officer James Rex Jensen Jr., 30, accidentally shot and killed March 13 by a fellow SWAT officer in a botched drug raid; and Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter John Aguirre Jr., 26, shot to death while responding to a domestic disturbance call in Meiners Oaks.

The local homicide statistics do not include some local victims of violence because they were killed in other places.

Two of those victims not on the list are 18-year-old Gloria De la Cruz and Jenniffer Vernals, 15.

De la Cruz disappeared from her El Rio home April 23. Her body was found a day later in a dumpster in the Wilshire area of Los Angeles. Vernals, of Ventura, disappeared March 30. Her bones were discovered near a Montecito ranch in August.

Looking at the lists of victims of violence, it is hard to remember that Ventura County has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation and is still one of the safest urban areas in the country. The 33 homicides here in 1996 are dwarfed by the number of killings in Los Angeles County, where on average there are about 33 slayings a week.

More than half of Ventura County’s homicides occurred in Oxnard, where killings have jumped from 11 last year to 17 in 1996.

And about half of those were gang-related slayings. Probably most disturbing is that eight of the 17 victims were 18 years old or younger.

“That’s something we’ve seen over the years--younger and younger victims and younger and younger perpetrators,” said Cmdr. Joe Munoz of the Oxnard Police Department.

The youngest victim of all was 2-year-old Joselin Amor Hernandez of Oxnard, who died June 22 after being hit in the stomach.

Her parents, Rogelio and Gabriela Hernandez, are charged with murder.

The couple are undergoing a preliminary hearing on the abuse and murder charges to determine whether they should be put on trial.

Many of this year’s victims probably knew their killers, police say.

The county has seen parents charged with killing their child, neighbors charged with killing neighbors, husbands with killing their wives, and a son with killing his father.

In January, Robert Crowley, a 67-year-old Ventura truck driver, was shot and killed. Police arrested his son, 43-year-old Lee Crowley.

The two were arguing over who would pick up Lee’s twin brother from the airport, police said.

That was a common theme in 1996--people killing people over trivial matters.

“This year I think we’ve been able to say what has happened in each case,” said Det. Gary McCaskill of the Ventura Police Department, which has handled six homicides. “But I don’t think we really will know why. I mean, most of this stuff is over nothing, or very unimportant things.”

Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard E. Holmes, who oversees homicide prosecutions, said there seldom is much of a motive.

“People think that motive is an extremely important aspect of a case, and yet, in reality, people kill over things a reasonable person wouldn’t so much as slap another person over,” Holmes said. “Maybe someone ‘dissed them,’ or it could be something even more trivial, . . . but the layman definitely overrates motive.”

For Holmes, the most striking aspect of this year’s homicides is the number of time-consuming death penalty cases.

One of the most notorious cases involves the slaying of 35-year-old Sherri Dally, a mother of two young boys and the operator of a day-care center in her home.

Dally’s decomposed body was found a month after she was kidnapped from a Target store parking lot. She had been repeatedly stabbed and bludgeoned with a camping ax, coroner’s investigators said.

Her husband, Michael Dally, and his mistress, Diana Haun, were arrested and charged with murder.

Another possible death penalty case involves Alan Brett Holland, a 29-year-old drifter from Hollywood, who is charged with murder in the death of 65-year-old Mildred Charlotte Wilson during a carjacking outside the Poinsettia Pavilion shopping center in Ventura.

Wilson’s slaying is the kind of attack that undermines the area’s sense of security, McCaskill said.

“That kind of random violence is very disturbing because that could have been anyone’s mother or wife,” McCaskill said. “It was important for us to solve.”

Holland, who was found with the alleged murder weapon in his car after a routine traffic stop, is scheduled to go to trial in the spring and could face the death penalty.

Isabel Guzman, 30, also didn’t know her killer, although she apparently met him minutes before she was shot to death Nov. 2 outside the Santa Paula restaurant she ran with her husband.

Felix Magana, a 50-year-old farm worker, was arrested and is set to go to trial for the slaying early next year.

Prosecutors still do not have a motive for the shooting, but witnesses said Magana was drunk and brandishing two handguns. Guzman asked him to leave, and although he did not seem to be bothered by the request, a few minutes later he confronted Guzman in the back of the restaurant and allegedly shot her.

In quick succession after Guzman’s shooting, quiet Santa Paula had two other homicides. The slayings were the first in the city since October 1994, said Santa Paula Police Chief Walt Adair.

“Homicides are incident-driven, and they do not lend themselves to being suppressible,” Adair said. “Really, there is very little police departments can do except when those are gang-related things.”

And gangs continued to play a persistent role in many Ventura County homicides.

Twelve people died in a series of slayings in Oxnard in the first half of the year, threatening to push that city’s homicide rate to record levels. However, the violence subsided to more moderate levels in the second half of the year, officials said.

Methodist minister Larry Tyler-Wayman and members of the nondenominational group Faith Connection have conducted vigils at many of the sites where the young victims of violence died, trying to head off more violence.

The vigils have also become emotional forums, where family members and friends can express their grief or anger, said Tyler-Wayman, who has been involved in at least 20 vigils in 1996 alone.

“It could have been someone’s son, brother, boyfriend, girlfriend, daughter that got caught up in this violence, and we’re there to remember them so it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

“The reasons for the death are ultimately immaterial in the final, larger picture. We have to continue to confront those things that lead to this kind of senseless loss of life. We can’t walk away and deny it as people of goodwill and community. We must stand up against it.”

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Ventura County Homicides in ’96

* Jan. 1: Manuel Encarnacion, 28, of Oxnard

Shot in the head, found next to a second homicide victim at Durley Park in Oxnard. No witnesses have come forward, and police have no leads or suspects.

* Jan. 1: Jesus Silva Onofre, 22, of Oxnard

Also shot in the head, died with Encarnacion at Durley Park in Oxnard.

* Jan. 20: Robert Barno, 38, of Oxnard

Died in the hospital from injuries suffered Jan. 13 in a brawl outside the Borderline bar in Thousand Oaks. The district attorney’s office ruled the death an accident. Barno was hit in the chin and fell backward, hitting his head on the curb and fracturing his skull, authorities said.

* Jan. 25: Felipe Hernandez, 16, of Oxnard

Shot to death Jan. 25 at Oxnard’s Centerpoint Mall. James Moreno, 17, was convicted of murder on Dec. 18 and is waiting to be sentenced.

* Jan. 26: Robert Crowley, 67, of Ventura

Shot to death at his home. Ventura police arrested 43-year-old Lee Crowley, the victim’s son, who is in custody awaiting trial.

* Jan. 29: J. Bert Deck, 33, of Oxnard

Beaten and shot in the head, Deck’s body was found in an orchard in south Oxnard. Oxnard police investigators arrested Douglas Eugene Wickham, 46, but Wickham was later released. Detectives say they are now looking at another suspect.

* Jan. 29: Luis Magana, 15, of Oxnard

Shot in the head when the car he was riding in was peppered with pistol shots by suspected rival gang members. Oxnard police investigators say they have a suspect but have been thwarted by lack of cooperation from witnesses.

* Feb. 17: Anthony Moore, 30, of Oxnard

Shot in the chest after breaking into the home of Russell Schmitz. Police said the shooting is expected to be ruled a justifiable homicide by the district attorney’s office. Oxnard police detectives said Schmitz shot Moore with an AK-47.

* March 3: Daniel Lara, 18, of Oxnard

Killed in a gang-related shooting. Oxnard police investigators said they have had little cooperation from witnesses.

* March 13: Oxnard Police Officer James Rex Jensen Jr., 30, of Ventura

Shot accidentally during a botched drug raid in Oxnard by his mentor and fellow SWAT team member, Sgt. Dan Christian. The district attorney’s office decided in November not to charge Christian with any criminal negligence. But after the district attorney’s report was released, Jensen’s widow filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Christian and the department.

* April 15: Gabriel Gomez, 15, of Oxnard

Beaten to death near a middle school on Hill Street in a suspected gang-related attack. Oxnard police investigators say the case is “solvable” but have not yet made any arrests.

* May 5: Marco Aurelio Rodriguez, 21, of Canoga Park

Shot in the head while working at a market in downtown Moorpark. John Charles Alvez, 23, of Lancaster was sentenced Dec. 13 to life in prison without parole.

* May 5: Sherri Dally, 35, of Ventura

Bludgeoned and stabbed to death, her body was found a month after she was kidnapped from a Target store parking lot. Dally’s husband, Michael, and his mistress, Diana Haun, were later arrested and charged with murder. They are awaiting trial, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

* May 20: Juan Elijio Carranza, 35, of Lancaster

Shot in the head and chest while riding in a tow truck in Thousand Oaks. Ventura County sheriff’s investigators arrested Bradley Neill Raville, 42, owner of the truck, who admitted to shooting Carranza but said it was in self-defense. Raville was later released, but investigators said the case is still open.

* May 21: Ralph Rico, 14, of Oxnard

Shot in the chest in what appears to be a gang-related attack. Oxnard police arrested Albert Madueno, 16. Madueno recently pleaded not guilty to the slaying. He will be tried as an adult in February.

* May 26: Marivel Camacho, 36, of Oxnard

Shot to death by her estranged boyfriend, who then committed suicide.

* June 22: Joselin Hernandez, 2, of Oxnard

Died because of blunt-force trauma to her stomach. Her parents, Rogelio and Gabriela Hernandez, both 18, are undergoing a preliminary hearing to see if they will be held for trial on murder charges.

* July 5: Martin Reyes, 31, of Oxnard

Shot in the chest and stomach by his wife, Edna Reyes, also 31, in front of two Oxnard police officers and her 11-year-old son. Claiming years of domestic abuse, she pleaded guilty to manslaughter in September and is serving six years in prison.

* July 17: Deputy Peter John Aguirre Jr., 26, of Santa Paula

Shot and killed in Meiners Oaks while responding to a domestic disturbance call. Michael Raymond Johnson, a 49-year-old Vietnam veteran and recovering alcoholic, is set to stand trial for murder.

* July 20: Mildred Charlotte Wilson, 65, of Oxnard

Shot to death in a carjacking outside the Poinsettia Pavilion shopping center in Ventura. Alan Brett Holland, a 29-year-old drifter from Hollywood, is set to go on trial for murder in the spring. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

* July 25: Jaime “Jinx” Morales, 17, of Oxnard

Beaten to death in an alley by three young men believed to be members of a rival gang. Police arrested Donald Brown, who surrendered in Jackson, Fla. “He told us he didn’t want to run anymore,” an investigator said. Brown is in custody, awaiting prosecution.

* July 30: Darwin Cruz, 26, of Ventura

Shot in the chest on a ranch road near a migrant worker residence where he lived. An arrest warrant was issued against Ulysis Moreno, 27, a co-worker of Cruz, by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. Moreno, a native of El Salvador, is still at large.

* Aug. 13: Mariann Rokos, 61, of Thousand Oaks

Shot to death by her husband, Jerry Rokos, who also killed himself. Rokos’ husband was apparently distraught over the breakup of their marriage. She had gone over to their Siesta Avenue home to pick up some of her belongings.

* Aug. 16: Manuel Ortiz Amaro, 46, of Oxnard

Shot to death outside a home in the Colonia neighborhood. Amaro, a parolee, was rumored to have been shot by members of the Mexican Mafia, but investigators still have no leads. Amaro is the uncle of Gloria De la Cruz, an 18-year-old mariachi singer from El Rio, found dead in a dumpster in Los Angeles in April.

* Sept. 21: Luis Gerardo Rodriguez, 17, of Oxnard

Beaten to death on a street in south Oxnard in what appeared to be a gang-related attack. Two Oxnard men, Francisco Soto, 20, and Eric Marcelino, 19, were recently arraigned in connection with the slaying. Marcelino faces the additional charge of using a club during the beating.

* Oct. 24: Mark W. Schultz, 20, of Ventura

Shot to death at a Motel 6 by members of an Oxnard gang. Ventura police detectives said Schultz and several friends had apparently gone to the motel room to take money and drugs from the men, who allegedly robbed a friend of theirs a week or two earlier. As Schultz, armed with a handgun, approached the doorway where the men stood, one of them shot him in the chest. Ventura police detectives said the district attorney has unofficially ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide.

* Nov. 2: Isabel Guzman, 30, of Santa Paula

Shot to death at the back of the La Playita Seafood restaurant, which she ran with her husband. Felix Magana, a 50-year-old farm worker, is awaiting trial for her slaying. Prosecutors and witnesses say Magana was drunk and brandishing two handguns inside the restaurant when Guzman asked him to leave. Magana allegedly confronted her outside and shot her to death.

* Nov. 9: Antonio Rodriguez, 27, of Santa Paula

Died after being beaten at a Santa Paula party. Officials from the Santa Paula Police Department are continuing to investigate, but the other party-goers have not been cooperative.

* Nov. 23: Luis Carlos Romero, 22, of Oxnard

Shot allegedly by a 17-year-old at a birthday party. The teenager has been arrested on a probation violation, and Ventura police detectives said he will probably be charged with murder early next month.

* Dec. 4: Darryl Solis, 33, of Santa Paula

Died after being beaten by two men in an as-yet unexplained confrontation. Solis was dropped off at Santa Paula Memorial Hospital in a coma and died two days later. A man who said he hit Solis turned himself in to police and has since been released.

* Dec. 5: Ron Rowe, 30, of Simi Valley

Shot to death on the lawn of his home in an argument that was part of a long-standing feud with a next-door neighbor. Police arrested Christopher Harbridge, who has been charged with murder despite his claim that the shooting was in self-defense.

* Dec. 9: Kenny Wayne Beardsley, 32, of Ventura

Stabbed to death in his west Ventura apartment. The Ventura Police Department arrested John De la Torre Jr. De la Torre is set to be arraigned on murder charges early next year. Detectives said the slaying was probably over money and drugs.

* Dec. 9: Gabriel Cortez, 24, of Oxnard

Shot and killed while at a Mexican restaurant. Cortez was eating with his nephew, Frank Cortez, 26, and their girlfriends when they got into an argument with three men. One of the men shot Gabriel and Frank. Gabriel, a father of two young daughters, died, and Frank was seriously injured. Oxnard police are still looking for the assailants.

Source: Ventura County coroner’s office, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, Ventura Police Department, Oxnard Police Department and Santa Paula Police Department

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Homicides in Ventura County

Year: Total

1989: 23

1990: 20

1991: 48

1992: 32

1993: 45

1994: 28

1995: 26

1996: 33

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Homicides by City in 1996

City*: Number

Moorpark: 1

Simi Valley: 1

Unincorporated: 2

Thousand Oaks: 3

Santa Paula: 3

Ventura: 6

Oxnard: 17

* Fillmore, Ojai, Port Hueneme and Camarillo did not record any homicides in 1996.

Source: Ventura County coroner, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, Ventura Police Department, Oxnard Police Department, Santa Paula Police Department