A Dancer Stilled, a Killer on Run

The best flamenco guitarists must understand the moves and motives of the dancers who perform to their accompaniment. Miguel Fernandez, a mild-mannered schoolteacher from Pomona, played the instrument only as an amateur. But he had become an expert on the style of his most cherished dancer, Maria Isabel, his only daughter.

She had that bravado and air of arrogance that this ancient Gypsy dance demands. She was joyous and independent, too, ideal qualities for a performer who must express herself spontaneously and surrender to the uninhibited emotion of her art.

Earlier this year, the free spirit of this rising young star cost her life. Maria Isabel Fernandez was stabbed viciously, police say, by a jealous boyfriend who then abandoned his Mustang at the Mexican border and disappeared. The charming and well-dressed suspect, still on the loose, had tragically tried to possess a stunning 17-year-old whose soul already belonged to flamenco.

Juan Talavera of Whittier, a veteran choreographer who teaches Spanish dance throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, said the death on Feb. 5 of such a bright talent stunned the region’s close flamenco community.

Those who knew her said she exuded sexuality on stage and a girlish innocence in person. She couldn’t wait to turn 18 on May 24 and be considered a grown-up.

“She had this certain light that only very few people have on the stage,” said Talavera. He plans to join other flamenco performers in a benefit Aug. 29 at Pasadena City College, where she was a student. Proceeds will go to publicize the hunt for her killer.

Isabel had strong legs but delicate and graceful arms, as her art required, said her father, fluttering his hands over his head to impersonate her elegant, angelic motions. They were like wings, no match for the brutal force of an enraged killer.

The teenager was cremated in her favorite, polka-dotted flamenco dress, but she also wore uncustomary gloves to spare the public the sight of her wounded limbs. Her fine hands had been sliced and shredded in her futile fight with the knife blade. And the gorgeous body she had sculpted with so much discipline was grotesquely gouged by more than 40 disfiguring thrusts from an out-of-control butcher.

“How could she handle a bull in a ring with no cape and no sword?” asked Fernandez, 61.

Police are still seeking the suspect, Johnny Andres Ortiz, 27, who lived with his parents in Chino Hills before he fled. Pasadena city officials have offered a $25,000 reward for the capture of the slim Colombian with the crooked, dimpled smile. He’s described as a smooth talker, clean-cut, well-groomed and well-mannered.

The victim’s father, who recently filed a wrongful death suit against the suspect, complains that police have not done enough to track him down. And Fernandez believes his daughter might still be alive if police had acted more decisively in response to the first 911 call they received on the morning of the murder.

That call came in at 11:18 a.m. that fateful Friday. The police report states that “a woman was heard screaming in the background.” But the officers who responded saw no signs of forced entry. The curtains were drawn and they heard no stirrings inside. After 20 minutes, they left.

Two hours later came another 911 call. This time, it was from Fernando Ortiz, the suspect’s father. He said his son had called him from a pay phone and admitted doing something terrible to Maria Isabel. The father of the fugitive wanted police to go to the victim’s home on Harkness Avenue and “check the welfare of the girlfriend.”

The police report does not explain why the man waited a full hour after his son’s call to sound the alarm. Nobody returned messages left at the Ortiz residence.

When officers finally entered, they didn’t break down the door. They waited for a manager to bring a key. Inside, an officer noticed dried blood smeared on the telephone receiver. The phone was hung up, plugged in and sitting silently on the night stand.

In the cold, graceless language of police records, officers awkwardly described the position of Isabel’s nude body. They call her Victim Fernandez, capitalized like a proper name.

She was lying on the floor by her bed. Her hands were closed and held up by her head, which was resting on a large piece of plywood, about 4 by 8 feet. But the police account failed to convey the operatic tragedy symbolized by the terrible tableau.

For Maria Isabel lay dead on the platform she used to practice her dance steps. Her impassioned blood had spilled into a pool on the wood. About a foot from her head, police noted two bloodied prints from a tennis shoe, a silent clue left on the plank that once resonated with the sound of the dancer’s percussive footwork.

A kitchen knife also lay on the plywood platform, blood caked on its wood handle and six-inch blade. A second kitchen knife was found on the bed. And the grisly death scene was reflected in the mirror that once reflected the victim’s vitality as she danced.

The case forced Pasadena police to review their procedures. No rules had been violated in this case, officials said, but officers subsequently were instructed to “err on the side of forcing entry whenever there is a possibility of human life being in danger.”

It’s unlikely Maria Isabel could have been saved even if police had barged in on the first call, the brass said, because her wounds were so severe. But her father is not convinced. And he also believes police might have caught the killer in the act.

“Clearly, we understand the distress of the father,” said Cmdr. Mary Schander. “I assure you we’re doing everything we can to find the murderer.”

Yet, police say the FBI still has not posted information about Ortiz on its fugitive Web site. That won’t happen for another 10 days, but police can’t explain the long delay. Investigators are “working diligently with several foreign countries” and are pursuing several active leads, police say.

Fernandez, with a weary sigh, says he’s heard it all before.

He said officers carelessly left behind the killer’s watch at the crime scene, which he later turned over to detectives. And on the eve of the funeral, friends made a more grisly find--pieces of flesh on one of the stuffed teddy bears Isabel loved so much.

It wasn’t until after the murder that Fernandez learned details of his daughter’s troubling relationship. Like a normal teenager, she preferred to share her personal life with her friends, who called her “Angel.”

Friends say Isabel’s boyfriend was so jealous he followed her, showed up uninvited to her dance practices, and gave her a pager to keep tabs on her at all times. He’d sometimes page her half a dozen times while she watched a movie with friends who’d say, “Are you serious? It’s him again?”

Other times, Ortiz would call Isabel on her cell phone, accusing her of lying about who she was with and demanding to talk to her female companions to check her story. Judy Sanchez, 24, a close friend, said Isabel would even get pleading calls from the boyfriend’s mother after a breakup. She’d beg Isabel to take her son back because he was lovesick and starving himself to death, said Sanchez. The tactic, combined with gifts of chocolates, balloons and teddy bears, softened the young woman’s heart.

On the Sunday before the murder, the couple broke up without a big scene, said her father and her friend. Isabel returned his gifts, including the small portable heater he had given her to keep her room warmer and the pendant that fused their names, Johnny and Maria, around her neck.

But then came the ominous, desperate messages on her answering machine. Six or seven in a row, pleading with her to pick up: “Maria, mi amor, contestame el telefono. Donde estas? Contesta, amor, por favor!”

Fernandez, who had just returned from Bolivia, said he tried to warn his daughter about the man the night before she died. But Isabel, who had cooked dinner for her father that evening, was bubbly as usual and brushed aside his concerns.

“And that was the last talk I had with her,” said Fernandez, who went to work the next morning and never saw his girl again.

Fernandez, a single father, watched his daughter dance since she was 3 in their home town of Cochabamba. “I fed her flamenco like milk,” he recalled.

But the genteel man surprised me during my visit this week when he opened a door on the hutch of his small computer desk and said softly, “I have her here.”

He removed yet another framed picture of his daughter and revealed a small box with an embossed angel on the front. It contained the urn with Angel’s ashes.

“I don’t want to leave her here,” said he father. “I want to take her to Bolivia where she was born. I think she belongs there.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.