Oxnard Man Charged in Singer’s Death

Los Angeles authorities filed murder, rape and robbery charges Thursday against a 26-year-old Oxnard man suspected in the slaying of a teenage mariachi singer, whose body was dumped in an alley in the Wilshire district last April.

Corey Len Robinson, the operator of an escort service in Ventura County, could face the death penalty if he is convicted in the killing of 18-year-old Gloria De la Cruz of Oxnard, said Los Angles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Maria Palomino.

A decade-old rape case provided the pivotal evidence needed to connect Robinson to the slaying after an arduous 10-month investigation, said Los Angeles Police Det. Ron Reiser.

DNA from saliva samples taken when Robinson was convicted in Ventura County on Jan. 30, 1987, of raping a family member matched deoxyribonucleic acid contained in semen samples taken from De la Cruz’s body, Reiser said.

“We reached back with 10-year-old DNA and made our guy,” he said. “This way we knew what we were looking for before we went to get him. It was pretty unique.”

Robinson is believed to have kidnapped, raped and then strangled De la Cruz in Oxnard.

Reiser said the 6-foot-2, 175-pound Robinson then allegedly drove to Los Angeles, where he dumped De la Cruz’s body, which was bound at the hands and feet, in an alley trash bin behind 6103 Alcott St. and set her corpse aflame.

The fire apparently extinguished itself and a 103-year-old resident of the neighborhood, who was taking out his garbage at 6:30 a.m. April 23, discovered the woman’s body, Reiser said.

It took Los Angeles police 17 days to identify De la Cruz’s body and inform her family of her death. A five-member team of detectives interviewed hundreds of friends and relatives of De la Cruz before amassing enough evidence to enable a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in January to issue a warrant for Robinson’s arrest.

He was arrested Tuesday morning in Oxnard at a Princeton Avenue duplex by Ventura County sheriff’s detectives. Robinson further implicated himself in the crime as he was being interviewed by police, according to Reiser.

He said Robinson told detectives that De la Cruz was one of about a dozen women who worked for his escort service, but police have been unable to substantiate his assertion.

De la Cruz’s mother, whose name is also Gloria, said the charges against Robinson help in fulfilling a promise she made to her slain daughter, the youngest of her four children.

“I’ll never get my daughter back, I’ll never see her again, but when I buried my daughter, I promised her I would never give up until I found justice for her,” she said. “It still hurts terribly--it will hurt for the rest of my life--but I can look up to the sky and tell her ‘mija, I did not give up and justice will be done. . .’

“I never want him out on the streets to hurt somebody else.”

Robinson’s arraignment on the murder, rape and robbery charges, originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon, was postponed until March 5, because he may hire his own attorney rather than have the public defender’s office represent him, Palomino said.

Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to file kidnap charges against Robinson, she said, but declined to elaborate. A special circumstance that triggers the possibility of the death penalty upon conviction was added because of the alleged rape, Palomino said. Robinson is being held without bail in the Los Angeles County Jail.

The decision to prosecute Robinson in Los Angeles County rather than Ventura County, where some defense attorneys say the court system is less congested and harsher penalties are often meted out, was a matter of routine, authorities in the two counties said.

“All of the investigation in this case has been done by the L.A. Police Department and the crime lab work, etc., was done by L.A. and the body was in Los Angeles and that’s where it’s being tried,” said Richard Holmes, supervisor of the Ventura County district attorney’s office major crimes and homicide unit.

“Historically, when the body is found in that county and all of the detective work was done by that county, that county prosecutes.”

The reverse also has occurred in the past, Holmes said.

Times staff writer Daryl Kelley contributed to this story.