3rd Trial Brings Conviction in Home-Invasion Case

The fierce five-year legal battle between prosecutors and the mastermind of a home invasion and bank robbery ring finally ended in conviction Thursday, years after his partners were found guilty and jailed for the same crimes.

In two prior trials, Alex Yepes had successfully argued that he was wrongly accused by the real robbers. A friend, his wife and concert tickets provided alibis.

A federal jury acquitted him in 1994, but, in a controversial move, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office responded by filing state charges for the same crimes. Still, Yepes, 28, skated by in a 1997 trial, when a lone juror who believed his alibi forced a mistrial on a vast majority of the charges against him.

What made the difference this time?

“I think that we didn’t have an aberrant juror,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Chasworth said.

By Wednesday afternoon, after a little more than three days of deliberation, jurors in the retrial had already reached verdicts in 21 of the 30 counts against Yepes, which Superior Court Judge Charles Peven heard Thursday morning.

The jury found Yepes guilty of a Canyon Country incident in which he and his partners held a bank officer and eight relatives hostage at gunpoint in her home, then forced her to open a bank vault the following morning. Those charges alone carry a sentence of between 20 to 30 years plus life in prison, Chasworth said.

The jury continues to deliberate charges stemming from a similar Northridge incident and an attempted robbery at the same Canyon Country bank, which could net Yepes another decade to life in prison.

Yepes’ lawyer, Joseph Gutierrez, could not be reached for comment Thursday, but during trial, he told the jury that the state had no physical evidence against his client and was relying on the word of an accomplice who had changed his story several times. He also said Yepes was identified by witnesses only after they already knew he was a suspect.

But Chasworth said Yepes’ alibis did not stand up to scrutiny. She said his female friend lied for him in the first case. Yepes did attend a rock concert the day of another attack, but prosecutors contended he committed the home invasion later.

Chasworth said the group followed bank officers to learn their habits and where they lived. They then attacked them at gunpoint at home, tying up family members, children and friends while quizzing the bank employees to learn how best to commit the robbery. The next morning, the victims were forced to go to work and open the vault, knowing that family members were being held at gunpoint.

They dressed in black and masked their faces, used walkie-talkies and police scanners, and sprayed paint on surveillance cameras to try to evade capture as they escaped with more than $100,000 from each vault.

They targeted TransWorld Bank in Canyon Country--once unsuccessfully--and later hit Coast Federal Bank in Northridge.

Their downfall came when they began spending lavishly, Chasworth said. After the robberies, Yepes bought two cars with cash, and he and his accomplices took trips to Cancun and Las Vegas, she told the jury.

Chad and Brett Pelch, sons of a Los Angeles police sergeant, were both convicted in 1997 of multiple counts related to the robberies and each received life sentences.

Darren Patrick Towers, who confessed to the crimes when confronted by the FBI and went on to testify against his accomplices, received a 15-year prison sentence in exchange for his cooperation. A fourth suspect remains at large.

Gerald Scotti, a defense lawyer who represented Yepes in the federal trial and the first state trial before removing himself from the case, citing a conflict, called the state prosecution sour grapes. He complained that some of the evidenced used in the federal trial was not admitted in the state case, including statements by Chad Pelch that Yepes was not involved.

“I still believe he’s innocent. I think he would have been acquitted in the second trial had the evidence been on the par with the first trial,” Scotti said. “It’s clear in my mind they were trying to railroad him to get the conviction they couldn’t get in federal court.”