New Sheriff’s Unit Is Heating Up ‘Cold Cases’

Theirs is a special kind of grief, caused not only by the pain of losing a loved one, but by the helpless rage that goes with not knowing if the killer will ever be caught.

For the victims, it’s usually over in a single, pain-drenched instant. But the families of Ventura County’s unsolved homicides can never truly bury their dead.

“It’s been hard to get angry at anybody when you don’t know who to be angry at,” said Floyd Leech, whose wife, Monica, was shot and killed 2 1/2 years ago in a Thousand Oaks bank robbery that remains unsolved. By all accounts, Leech, a teller, did nothing to provoke the masked robber whodelivered the fatal shot to the back of her head in April 1997.

“You’re angry at the situation, but where do you focus the anger? You’ve got feelings bottled up and nowhere to direct them.”

Floyd Leech shares that frustration with 150 other families, whose loved ones have been killed but whose cases remain unsolved. Some go back to the 1970s. Some victims are well-known, such as Leech, whose killing generated significant media coverage. Some are obscure.

Sixty-four fall within the jurisdiction of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. Most of the others occurred in Oxnard, but Port Hueneme, Santa Paula and Ventura also have several cases of their own.

Many of these old cases are about to get a second look now that the Sheriff’s Department is creating a special unit to focus exclusively on “cold cases,” a term that aptly describes crimes where the trails have grown cold.

Sheriff Bob Brooks said there was no one single case, or trend, that triggered the idea. “It’s been talked about for several years,” he said.

From Ojai to Simi Valley, the unsolved cases don’t discriminate by age, sex, race or social status. Victims come from all walks of life--from the killings in a single summer of three, unrelated women in Port Hueneme, to the bludgeoning of a high-profile lawyer and his wife in bed in Ventura.

These are some of their stories:

* Melinda Brown had been out with friends one night last November. She called home and told her father she would be there in half an hour.

The 19-year-old Simi Valley woman never made it. Hunters found her remains two weeks later in a shallow grave in woods on the other side of Ventura County, in Los Padres National Forest. She had been shot once in the chest.

The investigation into Brown’s death is not yet considered a cold case, because investigators are still chasing leads. Should they at some point, however, decide they have exhausted all leads and take full-time investigators off the case, it would then become a priority for the new unit.

* One case that immediately will be looked at by the cold case unit is the unsolved 1989 strangulation of 90-year-old Florence Hackney. The widow was found in her Fillmore home on an 11-acre orange grove. An autopsy revealed she had been raped. Ten years later, deputies have yet to make an arrest.

The prime suspect is now dead, detectives say. Members of the cold case unit will revisit the case in the hopes they can either prove their hunch, or find a new lead.

Because the Sheriff’s Department now has at its disposal DNA matching equipment, and microscopes that can tell more about material evidence than in years past, officials are optimistic cold case investigators may find evidence they could not have found in cases that date back a decade or more.

Perhaps more importantly, detectives say, the cold case investigators will bring a fresh eye to an old case, and uninterrupted time and attention--rare commodities in police investigations.

In Hackney’s case, Sheriff’s Capt. Kelly Fadler said, “If we can prove the individual did this who is [dead], we know we’re no longer looking for someone.”

* The fatal bludgeoning of Ventura attorney Lyman Smith and his wife, Charlene, is one of the best-known unsolved cases in Ventura County.

It has frustrated Ventura detectives since March 1980, when Lyman Smith’s son went to visit his father, only to find the prominent, 43-year-old attorney and his 33-year-old wife dead in their bed. It appeared they had been beaten to death with a log from the fireplace.

They had been tied up, but investigators didn’t think it was the work of robbers. One of Smith’s business associates was arrested but prosecutors failed to make a case against him.

Earlier this year--nearly two decades later--authorities believed they had found a new lead, but have yet to make an arrest.

* More recently, Ventura detectives have been similarly confounded by the 1997 slaying of Jake Bush. The 16-year-old captain of the Buena High School track team returned home with his mother to find that their home had been burglarized.

While his mother phoned police, Jake searched the house. He surprised the intruder, who stabbed him and escaped.

Serrated Knife Found in a Driveway

Police found what they believe was the murder weapon--a foot-long serrated knife--in a driveway several blocks away. With as many as 13 detectives on the case at one point, police interviewed at least 125 people, but have yet to find Jake’s killer.

Lt. Brad Talbot of the Ventura Police Department said he is always reluctant to prioritize unsolved murders. “You can’t just single one out and say, ‘We want to get the killers of Lyman and Charlene Smith,’ because we really want to solve all of them,” said Talbot, who has had some involvement in 12 of the city’s 14 unsolved homicides.

“They’re all important to us. They become real personal. You lie awake thinking, ‘I hope we get a break.’ ”

* One of Oxnard’s most frustrating cases is the 1996 shooting death of Gabriel Cortez, a 25-year-old construction worker and father of two.

Cortez and his nephew were at a downtown Mexican restaurant, waiting for their food, when three men came into the restaurant and began arguing with them. Cortez and his nephew were shot and the men fled. The nephew recovered.

Angered by detectives’ slow progress, Cortez’s relatives launched their own investigation and at one point accused Oxnard officials of racism. They contended Ventura detectives seemed far more dedicated to finding the killer of Jake Bush, who was white, than Oxnard detectives were to find the killer of Cortez, who was Latino.

Det. Mike Palmieri said detectives believe others at the restaurant can identify the killers, but are afraid to. “I fully suspect there’s several people who know information that would help,” he said.

Oxnard detectives say murder cases have become tougher to solve since gang-related violence began to surge in 1994.

Over the past five years, they estimate, half to two-thirds of the city’s homicides have had some gang connection. There have been 17 unsolved cases since 1995.

In gang-related slayings, “You’ve got nobody who wants to do anything, out of fear of retaliation,” Palmieri said.

* In Port Hueneme, police have been stumped by the unsolved killings of five women dating back 25 years.

Two of the victims were suspected prostitutes found dead in motel rooms in the 1970s.

The others were 32-year-old Norma Rodriguez, 44-year-old Cynthia Burger and 87-year-old Beatrice Bellis, all killed in their homes in a two-month span during the summer of 1993.

In the six years since, the only thing detectives have been able to conclude is that the three women’s deaths--as close together as they came--probably were not linked.

Police Cmdr. Fernie Estrella said information from the cases has been entered into a national FBI registry that would inform the department whether suspects using similar methods had been apprehended elsewhere. So far, nothing has turned up.

Waiting for the Break That Closes a Case

In the municipal police departments that have not begun cold case units, detectives will try to unravel unsolved killings the way they always have. They will continue to file notes and tips that never panned out into thick case files and binders. They will wait for the phone call or letter or visit that might make the difference. Every once in awhile they will look over their notes even if they have nothing new.

With unsolved cases, “they may get put on someone’s filing cabinet,” said Ron Janes, chief deputy district attorney for major offenses in Ventura County. “But when they get some time, they take them down. They’re never closed.”

Meanwhile, sheriff’s officials say they will make their cold case investigators available to other jurisdictions that request assistance on individual cases.

The arrest earlier this year of 21-year-old Jose “Pepe” Castillo gave hope to all authorities who grapple with unsolved cases.

A tipster told police that Castillo of Santa Paula was connected to two homicides on the unsolved list. Castillo has confessed to one--the 1993 stabbing of Ventura High School student Jesse Strobel--and will face trial in the other case, the 1998 slaying of a Santa Paula market owner.

But in dozens of other cases, detectives have waited in vain for a tip, a DNA match or a confession. With each passing day, the likelihood of an arrest grows dimmer.

The Sheriff’s Department hopes that by allowing detectives to work exclusively on individual cold cases they can find new routes they might not identify if working piecemeal.

“I think it would bring continuity--they wouldn’t be pulled off to do something else,” said Elaine Cavaletto of Somis, the mother of slaying victim Monica Leech.

Leech’s case, as Melinda Brown’s, is not yet a cold case. Investigators as recently as two weeks ago were following new leads out of town. But Leech’s parents, who talk often with investigators, know how little evidence authorities have to work with. They are glad to know the cold case unit will be available should all leads run out one day.

Leech was 39 when she was killed, and the mother of two, now both teenagers. In September, Cavaletto visited her daughter’s grave on what would have been her 42nd birthday. She brought purple flowers at her grandchildren’s request. That was their mom’s favorite color.

Although co-workers being held hostage saw Leech get shot, the robbers wore hard hats and stockings over their faces. Beyond race and gender, the robbers didn’t leave clues about their identities--at least no clues that have led anywhere.

Leech followed the robbers’ instructions, and by all accounts did nothing that would have angered them or caused them to single her out.

“So what ticked him off?” said Cavaletto, who herself worked at a bank for years without incident.

“Why did they choose her?” she said. “And if they were that trigger-happy, what caused them to stop with one [employee]? I wonder if they even know.”