A Grieving Father’s Pursuit of Justice : John Burrows Gets Others Involved in Tracking Down Man Suspected of Killing His Son

For John Burrows, a father’s grief over the killing of his son may fade, in time. But his anger will persist as long as the killer remains a free man--and as long as the authorities don’t bring him to justice.

Five and a half years have passed since Burrows’ middle son, Douglas, died in a horrific traffic collision on a quiet downtown Los Angeles side street--a tragic irony given the younger Burrows’ job as a freelance photographer who eagerly mined street gangs, wars, fires and riots for compelling subject matter.

Almost since Day 1, the Los Angeles Police Department has suspected who did it; a convicted drug dealer named Rogelio G. Pereira, who allegedly ran a red light and rammed his 18-wheeler into the driver’s side of Burrows’ Toyota Celica. Then, authorities say, Pereira walked away from the scene amid the chaos that ensued when fire engulfed Burrows’ car.

Burrows, 29, and a day away from moving into the first home he had bought, died instantly.

The LAPD easily identified Pereira as the truck’s driver. He even agreed to surrender, police said. But then he vanished and the police issued an arrest warrant.

Initial efforts to find Pereira, including circulating a wanted poster with his mug shot, were unsuccessful.

The investigating officers later transferred out to other beats.

In recent years, the investigation has languished in the LAPD Central Traffic Division’s cold-case files, with no detective assigned to it, and with only the occasional check of crime computers to see if Pereira has run afoul of the law anywhere else. The LAPD, its own detectives confirmed last week, essentially has given up on the case.

But John Burrows never gave up.

Since the May 1, 1993 accident, the soft-spoken bank trust manager and Rotary Club member from La Canada Flintridge has busied himself with writing letters, making phone calls and pleading with local, state and federal law enforcement officials to keep searching for Pereira. Burrows met frequently with the Traffic Division investigators. He buttonholed then-Sheriff Sherman Block and Judge Lance Ito and his wife, Peg York, the LAPD’s top-ranking woman, at Rotary functions.

Burrows, 68, even bought a lunch with Charlie Parsons, then the FBI’s chief for Southern California, at a silent charity auction so he could plead for help from the bureau since Pereira was believed to be wanted in Arizona on unrelated charges.

None of it worked.

Then, at his most desperate, Burrows crossed his fingers and attended a cocktail reception for private investigators. There, he ran into Sergio Robleto, a highly decorated retired Los Angeles police lieutenant.

“I asked him, do you know how to find people,” Burrows recalled. “And he said, ‘Yes, I do.’ ”

Robleto, a stocky and gregarious man who seems to always be smiling, is a dogged investigator who used to head the LAPD’s South Los Angeles homicide squad, the busiest in the city. He too has three children, including a teenage son who wants to be a photographer, just like Doug Burrows.

“He started telling me his story,” Robleto, 50, said of his first meeting with John Burrows. “And I’ll tell you, if you hear his story and you are not moved, you’re not a human being.”

At the time, Robleto was two years into his new job as deputy Los Angeles director of Investigative Group International, a private investigation company.

He could see a father’s despair in Burrows’ face, and he was haunted by it.

So Robleto took up the case, essentially for free. Soon he was joined by associates who also volunteered their time and expertise. Among them: Dee Picken, a former microbiologist and horse wrangler turned database expert, and Arnold Contreras, a computer whiz in a wheelchair who turned down law school so he could care for three teenage siblings.

Exhaustive Detective Work

Together, they bored into computerized tax and credit records, cross-referenced Pereira’s aliases and analyzed myriad other information trails often overlooked by police.

They got some hits, and built a database and spreadsheets. They shadowed Pereira’s friends and family for days at a time. And they went door to door in rugged shantytowns near the Mexican border and showed Pereira’s photograph around at the local park.

The gumshoe work paid off. A few months ago, Robleto and company say, they discovered where Pereira has been hiding out--in the border town of Brawley. He was living, they say, quite openly and brazenly, at times under his real name.

Robleto gave the reams of documents and leads to the FBI, but never heard back. And, he said, he called the LAPD, saying he wanted to turn over information, and never got a reply.

“I got the brush-off,” Robleto said Friday.

The FBI could not comment on whether it had initiated an investigation into Pereira’s whereabouts, but a spokesman, Special Agent Ray Escudero, said Friday that the bureau would only assist on a local matter if requested to do so by local authorities, such as the LAPD.

Meanwhile, the LAPD is overwhelmed by its caseload and huge backlog of cold-case files with fugitives just like Pereira.

Det. Tia Morris, officer in charge of Central Traffic Division detectives, said she feels for John Burrows. “But his case is not the only case in the files, and on other cases, we don’t even have a suspect, so you can imagine how frustrated those families are.”

And those cases are heartbreakers too, Morris said.

In cases where a warrant has been issued, she said, the unit does a “due diligence” check about once a year, in which it runs a suspect’s name through the computer to see if he or she has been cited elsewhere or if they have registered a car under their name.

“We don’t expend a lot of time in the field because we don’t have new leads to work on,” said Morris, who said she would be extremely interested in reviewing the information that Robleto and his staff have accumulated.

Robleto said he was heartened to hear that, and that he hopes his good relationships with the FBI will result in their tracking Pereira too, even if he flees into Mexico. At times, he has wanted to “go in and take him down myself.”

“But I’m not a cop anymore, so I can’t,” he said.

As for the LAPD and the FBI, Robleto added: “I know they’re swamped. But I also know this: That man, John Burrows, has waited long enough.”

For Burrows and his family, the fact that they now know where Pereira has been, and that he is still out there somewhere, only compounds their grief.

Burrows’ wife Barbara’s peppy exuberance hides the crushing sense of loss that she says stays with her every minute of every day. She deals with it differently than her husband, preferring to find solace in visiting her son’s grave every week, without exception, and laying fresh flowers on it.

Barbara Burrows chooses to dwell on the positive--on how her son’s sunny personality even in the face of enormous struggle--brought a smile to all those around him.

Doug Burrows was born with a severely cleft palate and lip, and suffered through more than 30 operations as a young child to correct it.

The surgery helped his appearance. Still, he was made fun of by other children as a boy and shunned as a teenager. Few could understand his tortured speech, and he had such trouble eating that he grew up small and thin; so much so that he wore only long-sleeve shirts as a grown man to hide his bony arms. And he remained in pain and susceptible to debilitating ear infections until the day he died.

Excelled in His Field

Yet Burrows, who shot photos for The Times and a host of magazines, never talked about any of that, his family and friends say. Nor did he boast about the charity work he did, including his work with disadvantaged children that brought him to the downtown street on the Saturday afternoon on which he was killed.

“That’s why he had so much compassion, he had so much surgery and heartache,” his mother said softly. “He sometimes felt like killing himself because of the pain of what he went through. But he made up his mind--he was going to make the best of it, and have a good life.”

Burrows did have a good life. Through photography, he found a way to gain acceptance and a way to communicate his pain by chronicling the struggles of others, his father said.

John Burrows says his son excelled at it, so much so that he traveled the world, and bought a loft with his freelance wages. The day after his death, he was supposed to move in with the girlfriend he planned to marry. Instead, a coterie of fellow shooters who had elected him incoming president of the Los Angeles News Photographers Assn. began compiling a moving tribute to their colleague.

John Burrows dwells often on his son. He smiles proudly as he shows a visitor Doug’s many photos, which fill the walls of his old bedroom, where his clothes still hang neatly in the closet.

But Burrows remains fixated on his son’s killer too, as evidenced by the piles of law enforcement business cards on his desktop, and the other accouterments of his relentless campaign. He says his son’s death gives him nightmares still, and breathing problems and recurrent insomnia.

Burrows devotes many hours a week to upkeep of his son’s photography gallery and his reams of negatives, which he keeps in a room he built especially for them.

For him, rekindling the police investigation--and finding Pereira--are the least he can do for the son who had struggled the hardest to find his place in the world. He praises Robleto and his colleagues as godsends, but admits that he is frustrated at the apparent lack of law enforcement interest in the case.

“To know that he is out there, enjoying his life, that’s not where he should be,” Burrows said of Pereira, as he fingered a copy of his wanted flier. “I don’t so much care what they do with the guy. But I want him standing before a judge. I want him caught. I owe it to my son.”

“Doug was special,” Burrows added, after a pause. “And I’ve never given up hope that this man will be caught and brought to justice. And I will continue to do that until the day I die.”