Prosecutor Describes ‘Weekend of Horror’ as Murder Trial Opens

Three young men tortured an 18-year-old from Buena Park with coat hangers, slit his throat, hanged him from a rafter and stabbed him, a prosecutor alleged Monday as the trial of the three began.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robin Park said the torture and killing of Carlos Salanova occurred during a “weekend of horror, terror and torture” in a house where the parent was away.

Gregory Jason Chandler, 22, of Long Beach, Christopher David Scott, 21, of Buena Park and Rami Sabbara, 20, of La Palma are being tried together in Orange County Superior Court on charges of murder.

The attack occurred in February 1993, Park said, at the La Palma home of another 20-year-old who threw a party when his mother went to Las Vegas. Party-goers came and went that weekend, Park said, and many took methamphetamines.

Because Chandler had had a quarrel, “real or imagined,” with Salanova involving drugs, Scott brought him to the party, Park said. There, Salanova was bound to a chair with duct tape and beaten with wire hangers, she said.

He then was dragged into the garage, where his throat was cut and he was hung with a rope from a rafter, Park said.

Park said witnesses saw Salanova tied to a chair, and that one witness saw Sabbara laughing as he spun Salanova’s hanging body.

“You’ll hear testimony that Chandler didn’t think [Salanova] was dying fast enough,” she said.

Salanova’s body eventually was placed in a trash bag, Park said. After wiping fingerprints from the house, she said, the defendants drove to Long Beach, where they dumped the body into the Cerritos Channel. To make sure he was dead, Park said, the defendants punctured Salanova in the stomach before pushing his body over the rocks. His body was discovered nine days later with the rope still tied around his neck.

One of the defendants’ attorneys, Public Defender Tom Goethals, questioned the credibility of the witnesses prosecutors planned to call.

One potential prosecution witness revealed his version of events only last year, Goethals said. Another witness is a methamphetamine user, he said, who confessed in court documents that she “did lose touch with reality.”

One witness who was there and did not use any drugs did not see Salanova the entire weekend, Goethals said.

Goethals also argued that no physical evidence corroborates the witnesses’ stories. For example, though a witness said he saw Salanova hanging in the garage with his throat cut, there was no evidence of blood.

And though investigators found rope fibers on the rafter, they did not match those fibers found around Salanova’s neck.

“This case is about credibility,” Goethals said.

If convicted, the defendants could face a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole, due to special circumstances of torture.