Survey Shows 1 in 3 Killings in County Go Unsolved

John Rios is haunted by the thought that his son’s killer still walks the streets.

“It’s always there, you know,” he said. “I mean this guy is on the loose out there somewhere and he could do it again to somebody else. Maybe he already has.”

Rios’ son, 32-year-old John Rios Jr., was shot and killed the night of April 29, 1994, by a masked gunman on a Ventura street. And now, on the eve of that anniversary, his family carries not only the grief of losing him but the burden of not knowing why he was killed.

Rios, a hard-working 68-year-old Korean War veteran and devout Catholic, compares it to walking around with a bag of cement on his back.

He is not alone. That haunted feeling is something that he shares with the many other Ventura County residents who have lost loved ones to local violence and are waiting for justice.

The unsolved cases also weigh on the detectives who investigate the homicides, said Cmdr. Joe Munoz, who heads the Oxnard Police Department’s major crimes division, which year in and year out investigates more homicides than any other law enforcement agency in the county.

“I want justice too,” Munoz said. “I want it for my investigators, who’ve put in the hours tracking killers down, and I want it for the families.”

Despite the dogged work of local homicide investigators, one in three killings go unsolved in Ventura County, according to a Times survey of all homicides in the county in the last five years.

Of the 155 homicides in the county since January 1992, 57 cases, or about 36%, are unsolved. That number excludes the 27 justifiable homicides--cases of self-defense or fatal shootings by police that were deemed justified by the district attorney.

Although the percentage of unsolved cases in Ventura County is higher than the national average of 35%, local authorities point out that many of the cases from 1996 and 1997 included in the survey are still being investigated and will likely result in new arrests and convictions.

Consistent with The Times survey, though, a California Department of Justice study of clearance rates for homicides from 1986 to 1995 in Ventura County found that 31% of those cases remain unsolved.

“You can’t look at this in terms of the numbers alone,” said Ron Janes, a chief deputy for the Ventura County district attorney’s office in charge of prosecuting major crimes.

“Overall we do an exceptional job at solving these cases,” said Janes, pointing to the district attorney’s 97% conviction rate in homicide cases in which a suspect has been arrested and charged in the last five years.

Unsolved Cases Are Still Pursued

As for the unsolved cases, Janes said, “we continue to pursue those.”

Nationally, about 35% of homicides are not solved, according to statistics from the FBI released last year.

A case is considered solved, or cleared, if there is a conviction, or a judge issues a warrant for an arrest, or if the killing is ruled justified or accidental, or if the alleged killer Hwas slain in the commission of the crime.

A Times study completed late last year found that half of the 9,442 homicides in Los Angeles County from 1990 to 1994 ended with arrests or charges being filed.

Prosecutors in Ventura County obtained convictions ranging from manslaughter to first-degree murder in 55 of the 155 homicides since 1992, or about 35% of the cases.

In two of those cases--Christopher Sattiewhite, who was convicted of killing 30-year-old Genoveva Gonzales, and Mark Scott Thornton, convicted of killing 33-year-old Kellie O’Sullivan--the murderers have been sentenced to death.

With suspects in 13 other cases charged and awaiting trial, and warrants out on suspects in eight other homicides, Ventura County’s conviction rate in all likelihood will rise, said Janes. But again Janes said the numbers do not tell the whole story.

Sitting at a desk in his office, Janes became impassioned for a moment, pulling out a large poster board with surveillance pictures that show Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan waiting to cash a check at a local bank just half an hour before being killed.

“These are more than just numbers to us,” he said. “These are people. I use this when we are training deputies. Look at her.”

The pictures show O’Sullivan placidly waiting in line in front of a bank teller.

“She doesn’t know that in 30 minutes she’ll be dead,” Janes said. “These cases mean a lot to us in Ventura County. They are not just numbers.”

Higher Success Rate in Simi Valley, Ventura

In the last five years, the Simi Valley and Ventura police departments have had the most success at solving homicide cases, while Port Hueneme--the county’s smallest department--has had the most trouble.

Oxnard had the most homicides with 66, or about 42%, of all the homicides in the county over the five-year period. Of those cases, 29 remain unsolved. During the five-year period, Oxnard had 12 justifiable homicides, which were not included in the total.

Oxnard officials echoed the views of other county law enforcement sources, saying their clearance rates would improve significantly as cases from 1996 and 1997 are solved.

In September, the Oxnard Police Department arrested Marco Ortiz Jr. in a 20-year-old homicide.

“There’s no statute of limitations on these cases,” said Cmdr. Munoz, who supervises Oxnard’s major crimes division. “Just because it happened years ago doesn’t mean that we don’t still go back and work a case.”

Over the last year, the Oxnard Police Department has used four detectives to work exclusively on homicide cases.

Instead of being distracted by other major crime investigations, the Oxnard detectives can now focus exclusively on homicides, Munoz said.

But a high percentage of its homicides are difficult-to-solve gang-related killings. Witnesses--either because of fear of retaliation or a gang culture’s code of silence--often remain quiet and refuse to cooperate with police.

“It can be frustrating,” said Sgt. Lee Wilcox, an Oxnard homicide detective. “Especially when we think we know who did it.”

Unlike “traditional” homicides over love and money, gang homicides can be much more random--strangers killing strangers in the street over perceived slights.

Oxnard detectives investigating gang homicides must depend on the department’s street crimes division for help. Those officers have developed gang contacts and often hear word of what has happened. But making the case and finding the evidence and witnesses needed to convict a suspect can be difficult.

Twenty-six of the county’s 38 gang-related homicides since 1992 occurred in Oxnard. Of those, 15 are still unsolved.

Ventura County law enforcement agencies handle homicides in generally the same way, officials said.

Cases Challenge Small Departments

The first 48 hours are critical, and investigators have to muster all their resources, scouring the scene for evidence, looking into the victim’s personal and financial relationships.

If the case is gang related, word has to go out to officers in the street to listen for information.

In small departments like those in Port Hueneme and Santa Paula--each with fewer than 30 officers--a homicide can easily overwhelm their limited resources. Investigators with the county district attorney’s office and the Sheriff’s Department are available to help if needed.

Since 1992, Port Hueneme has had six homicides, with five cases still unsolved, and Santa Paula has had 11 homicides, with four unsolved cases.

During that period, Port Hueneme had three justifiable homicides and Santa Paula had one--which are not included in the total.

In 1993, the 20-member Port Hueneme Police Department was tapped out by the five homicides in the city that year. Because of the relatively few homicides in Port Hueneme, those cases skew the department’s clearance rates, officials said.

Three of those cases were strangely similar, investigators said--Norma Rodriguez, 32, Beatrice Bellis, 87, and Cynthia Burger, 44, were all found killed in their homes. Rodriguez and Burger were strangled; Bellis was stabbed to death.

Port Hueneme’s three police detectives--whose investigations include crimes from rape to home burglary--were overwhelmed by the caseload. The FBI was called in to help provide profiles of possible suspects, and investigators from the district attorney’s office also helped.

Last year police looked into whether a suspected serial killer who lived in the area for a time might have been responsible for the three deaths, but evidence cleared that man. Although detectives said they feel they have narrowed the search in two of the cases, they are still without suspects or strong leads.

“It makes you hope that there is a God,” said Port Hueneme Det. Jerry Beck.

Beck is hopeful that renewed interest in old cases will jar someone’s memory about the killings or about the victims, which could lead to a break in the cases.

“There could be somebody out there that knows something and just hasn’t come forward yet,” he said.

Killings Now Harder to Solve

In the last two decades, clearance rates nationwide have dropped in most urban areas as killings have increasingly moved out of homes and onto the streets, becoming harder to solve, according to national law enforcement officials.

Ventura County is no different. With more seemingly random violence, like the shooting of John Rios Jr., and more gang-related crimes, the clearance rates for homicide cases have gone down, officials said.

Cases like the Rios killing “can be just baffling,” said Ventura Police Det. Gary McCaskill.

Detectives work a case by canvassing friends and relatives, looking at relationships, looking at financial records, phone records, court records, and scouring a crime scene for evidence.

In gang-related incidents or seemingly random shootings, the trail to the killer is much harder to find.

Ventura Police Lt. Don Arth, who supervises that department’s major crimes division, said each law enforcement agency in the county is faced with unique circumstances that affect the outcome of its homicide cases.

Ventura, which has had 21 homicides since 1992, has only four open cases, solving 81% of its cases.

“We’ve been lucky,” Arth said. “There is a certain amount of luck to this job, but you also make your own luck through a lot of hard work.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Larry Robertson, who heads that department’s major crimes division, said that, because the county has large rural and remote areas, it is a popular place to dump the bodies of people killed elsewhere.

Next to Oxnard, the county Sheriff’s Department had the most homicide cases over the five-year period, with 43 killings in the county since 1992. Of those cases, 14 remain unsolved.

On Tuesday it will be three years since John Rios Jr. was killed. His family plans no special anniversary to mark the death.

A picture of the young Rios, leaning back and smiling at the camera, is posted at the Ventura police station with a request for information about the shooting.

Rios’ father, who worked alongside his son daily in the family janitorial business, related the sequence of events on the night his son was slain.

“He was late,” Rios’ father said, sitting in the family’s backyard with his wife, Victoria, an intensive-care nurse with the Ventura County Medical Center.

“It was a Tuesday,” the elder Rios said with intent eyes. “Johnny was with another man that he worked with. They were coming back from their last job at the American Red Cross, came down Palma Drive and then turned on Callens [Road] when it happened.”

His wife, with all the carnage she sees in the hospital emergency room, said she has accepted her son’s death.

John Rios Sr. is still struggling with the loss and worries about his son’s killer. He asks that pictures of his family not appear in the paper, fearful the killer might come back. He often thinks about the night his son was killed and wonders what would have happened if his son had taken a different route or arrived on the street a little earlier or a little later. He wonders about the gunman, who he was, why he shot his son.

“We just don’t know, do we?” he said.

Rios said he often goes to church to pray for his son. “I pray that before I die we find out who did this and why, and that he pay for what he did to my son.”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilson contributed to this story.

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Ventura County Homicides Since ’92

Solved cases include cases in which there was a conviction, a warrant issued, a suspect charged, or the case was cleared because the killer was killed. Cases that were ruled justifiable by the District Attorney’s Office were excluded from the total.

*--*

Total Total Total Jurisdiction homicides unsolved solved Countywide 155 57 98 Oxnard Police Department 66 29 37 Ventura County Sheriff’s Department 43 14 29 Ventura Police Department 21 4 17 Santa Paula Police Department 11 4 7 Simi Valley Police Department 8 1* 7 Port Hueneme Police Department 6 5 1

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Source: Ventura County Coroner’s office, District Attorney’s Office, and Sheriff’s Department. The Port Hueneme, Santa Paula, Simi Valley, Ventura and Oxnard Police Departments.

*Simi Valley’s one open case went to trial but the jury returned a not-guilty verdict.