The Unmaking of a Murder Case

After a trying year of rising crime, contract disputes and a struggle over who should lead the department, Santa Paula police finally had their chance to shine.

Last month, then-Chief Walt Adair announced the arrest of two men in connection with the slaying of a young mother during a botched robbery at a convenience store in June 1998.

The arrests of Alfredo Hernandez and his friend, Jose “Pepe” Castillo, both 21-year-old Santa Paula residents, capped 10 months of hard investigative work on the death of store clerk Mirna Regollar, shot once in the back of the head, then again by a second gunman as she lay on the ground.

Then the case began to unravel.

Castillo, who is awaiting trial in the 1993 slaying of a Ventura teen, has yet to be charged in the Regollar homicide.

And after holding Hernandez behind bars without bail for more than a week, prosecutors refused to take the case because, they said, there was not enough evidence to go to trial.

It was an embarrassing setback, one that has left investigators struggling to find more evidence and questioning whether Hernandez will ever be rearrested.

“I know there are a lot of people saying, ‘Did Santa Paula jump the gun?’ ” said Sgt. Carlos Juarez, head of the department’s four-member investigation unit. “People can say whatever they want, but we did everything we could legally. We worked on this case for months.”

Added new Chief Bob Gonzales: “The officers did not jump the gun; the officers did not botch the case. They did everything in accordance with the law and were not premature in the steps they took. I still feel we did the legal and appropriate thing.”

Investigators acknowledge, however, that during meetings with the district attorney’s office before the arrest, prosecutors warned that there was not enough evidence to file murder charges.

Santa Paula police, however, said they were out of time.

Police informants began warning that Castillo and Hernandez, both of whom have extensive family ties in Mexico, suspected they were being investigated and were at risk to flee the country.

Police also argued that, having explored all other investigative leads, the time had come to interview the suspects and search their homes.

And they hoped that with both men in custody, the pressure would cause one or both to talk in hopes of gaining leniency.

It was an investigative risk, but Juarez said his department was confident that “the time had come to move forward.”

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“We were told that unless additional information was obtained, there was a possibility there would be no filing,” Juarez said. “We knew that and at briefing that morning I told [investigators] we needed to get as much information as possible. We were on a fact-finding mission.”

But those who searched Hernandez’s house came up empty-handed.

And during police interviews, the suspects remained tight-lipped. Working against investigators was Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury’s policy against cutting deals with suspects, preventing authorities from offering one man a reduced charge in exchange for testifying against the other.

“I know what their policy is,” Juarez said. “But we always have hope they will do whatever it takes to get a conviction. That was our hope.”

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Ultimately, prosecutors gained no new evidence against Hernandez. After keeping him more than a week in jail without a charge, authorities had no choice but to let him go.

The main evidence against both men comes from a police source, a former friend of both suspects who agreed to wear a wire, allowing police to record conversations with Castillo and Hernandez.

The informant came to Juarez nearly a year ago volunteering to help investigators in exchange for “some assistance” in solving a legal problem of his own.

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During the wired conversations, authorities said, Castillo made several incriminating remarks about his involvement in the Junior’s Market robbery and in the 1993 stabbing death of a 17-year-old Ventura High School athlete, Jesse Strobel.

Prosecutors charged Castillo with Strobel’s murder, and charges in the Regollar case are pending.

But Hernandez was savvier, investigators said. He chose his words carefully, never directly implicating himself. With little they could use in court, prosecutors decided not to file charges.

There is other evidence against Hernandez, Santa Paula police officials said, including witness descriptions of the men who bolted from Junior’s Market after the shooting.

According to Chief Gonzales, enough evidence exists to bring the case to trial, and the district attorney’s decision not to go forward has been frustrating. Hernandez is still considered a flight risk.

“We feel much like a person who wants to buy a house,” Gonzales said. “You have a good job, a good income, and the bank still rejects you. We feel we have good evidence, that we’ve got a good case against him, and the D.A. is the bank saying, ‘Not at this time.’ ”

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Hernandez’s release also came as a crushing disappointment for Regollar’s mother, who wept with relief when she first learned--nearly a year after her daughter’s death--that the alleged shooters could be held accountable.

Angela Escobedo, 58, said that since Regollar’s death, she struggles each morning to get out of bed.

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Only 11 months before Mirna’s death, Escobedo’s husband died. Escobedo, who suffers from diabetes, said grief and health problems kept her from aiding too much in the day-to-day operations of Junior’s Market.

Assuming the burden of the family business was her daughter, Regollar.

In addition, Escobedo said, Regollar, 25, was spending her nights at Ventura College training to become a nurse and tending to two small children. And she did it all, Escobedo said, while maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average at school.

Regollar also made sure she scraped enough money together each month to pay the $135 tuition to send her son to private school, a commitment Escobedo continues for both grandchildren today.

“If not for my grandchildren,” Escobedo said in Spanish, her face wet with tears, “I probably would have died right along with my daughter. But right now, they only have me.”

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Jeffrey, 9, and Jacquelyn, 5, live with father Eligio Regollar in Escobedo’s modest home in Oxnard. They have sold the family market.

Escobedo said she still clearly recalls the day when she called her daughter at the store and a policeman answered the phone. She quickly learned that Regollar had been hurt and was at the hospital.

“I knew in my heart,” Escobedo said. “I felt it in my heart” she was gone.

But it was only recently that Escobedo learned further details of that day, including that Regollar had been shot by two assailants before they fled the store.

“What cowards,” Gonzales said. “Two of them against one woman. And they shot her from behind. I can’t imagine how she must have suffered.”

Authorities say the case against Hernandez is far from over.

On any given day, at least two of Santa Paula’s four investigators are working on the case, Juarez said. The bulk of their work, he said, lies in trying to persuade people who know what happened that June afternoon to tell police.

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Investigators stand convinced there are people with key information, but that they are afraid to talk.

“I think we’re honestly looking for people who will come forward to do the right thing,” Juarez said. “We believe we have the right person. Now we just need someone to come along and corroborate that for us.”

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Times staff photographer Carlos Chavez contributed to this story.