Sheriff’s Team Puts New Heat on ‘Cold’ Homicides

On a summer evening eight years ago, Luis Alberto Arango’s dream of making a life away from his native Guatemala ended violently in the parking lot of a Lake Forest Baptist church. A passerby discovered the 21-year-old’s stabbed body slumped against a block wall, a trail of blood stretching 60 feet from where he lay.

Within days, Orange County sheriff’s investigators had a suspect: Epain de Jesus Alarcon, one of eight people who shared an apartment with Arango just blocks from where the young laborer was slain. But as deputies quickly tracked Alarcon to a Los Angeles hideaway, the suspect fled the country.

For years, the investigation followed the pattern of hundreds of other unresolved homicides around the county, gathering dust and offering scant hope of ever bringing a suspect to trial.

But a recent tip led to a breakthrough. And just over two weeks ago a team of Orange County sheriff’s investigators devoted to solving “cold” homicide cases caught up with the suspect in Los Angeles.

Alarcon’s capture marks the first arrest by the team, which has spent two years delving into old homicide files.

The unit--called the Countywide Law Enforcement Unsolved Element, or CLUE--was funded by a federal grant and a generous contribution from the county.

CLUE, which comprises two detectives, a crime analyst and an assistant, has more than 100 cases to review, each made more frustrating with the passage of time. Leads dry up. Suspects move. And fresh detectives must immerse themselves in unfamiliar cases.

But time can also help. Witnesses are sometimes more willing to talk years later. Improved forensic technology, such as DNA profiling, can offer new leads. And sometimes suspects slip up or are finally ready to confess.

“It’s time for them to get off their chest what’s been weighing them down for years,” said Orange County Sheriff’s Investigator Larry Pool. That was the case with Alarcon, he said.

Eight years ago, on the evening of the killing, Arango was seen leaving his apartment with Alarcon after a Friday night spent drinking beer and playing cards, detectives said. Within days, Alarcon had left the country, they said, most likely for Guatemala, his homeland.

Once their suspect disappeared, detectives could only hope that he would eventually make the mistake of returning. Even then, though, they couldn’t be sure they would ever find him.

As the years passed, the case landed in the lap of Pool and his partner, Brian Heaney, at the CLUE unit. Both men are experienced investigators. Pool, a 13-year department veteran, moved to CLUE from the sex crimes unit in April 1998. Heaney, an 18-year veteran, is a former narcotics investigator who has been with CLUE from its start.

But even for the two experienced detectives, the Arango case, like all cold cases, proved frustrating.

“I often hope that we get lucky,” Heaney said, “that the phone will ring and we’ll get that tip we’re looking for.”

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The call came a year ago. An unnamed source told investigators that Alarcon was living somewhere in Southern California. Pool and Heaney began the laborious task of locating all the people they suspected that Alarcon might visit.

“In an unsolved case, the challenge is to be patient and to be dogged,” Heaney said. “There is not much excitement. There is not much in the way of immediate rewards.”

The detectives traced the suspect to a tiny shack in the Los Angeles County district of Lincoln Heights, where Alarcon was reportedly living with a girlfriend he had known at the time of the killing. He had changed his name to Alberto Sandoval, detectives said.

With few other leads, Pool and Heaney decided to confront their suspect. On the evening of July 7, they arrived at his home. As they talked outside with Alarcon’s girlfriend, the suspect came to the door, his hair and chest dripping as if he had stepped out of the shower as he buttoned a pair of shorts. The detectives recognized him instantly.

“He stood in the doorway and froze with this blank look of dismay,” Heaney recalled. “I asked him his name, and he simply said, ‘Alberto.’ But we knew. We knew he was Epain.”

Alarcon, 36, insisted that detectives had made a mistake. But after a two-hour interrogation, he confessed, detectives said. Alarcon has been charged with murder, but the investigation is far from over.

Now the detectives must re-interview potential witnesses for the legal proceedings and check forensic evidence.

And they must also search for Arango’s relatives, who, the detectives suspect, have moved from their last known address in Guatemala, and tell them that the man who admitted killing Luis Alberto Arango will finally be brought to justice.