Deputies Say Wife of Los Lobos Member Probably Is Dead

Three weeks after Sandra Rosas mysteriously disappeared from her Rowland Heights home, detectives said Monday that they have little hope the wife of Los Lobos singer-guitarist Cesar Rosas is still alive.

Although he has not been charged, her half brother Gabriel Gomez, 39, remains a prime suspect, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigator said. Gomez was arrested Oct. 24, the day after Rosas disappeared from her home, and is being held for violating his parole.

Detectives say that they plan to turn the case, including the evidence about Gomez, over to the district attorney’s office as early as Friday, after exhausting all other leads.

“It doesn’t look very good that she’s still alive,” said Det. Mike Scott. “We believe [Gomez] is the party responsible. As long as we have him, it gives us more time to do a complete investigation.”

Rosas, 47, was last seen by her three daughters about 8:30 p.m. Oct. 23 at her home.

At 11 p.m., when they returned, their mother was gone, and so was her 1996 Chevy Minivan.

Broken glass littered the driveway, and the front door of the family’s Spanish-style home stood open.

When one of her daughters called her mother’s cellular phone, “the cell phone was activated,” Scott said, and her horrified daughter overheard a conversation in which “Gabriel was making threats regarding their mother’s life.”

“I won’t go into the threats, but from our standpoint, it’s something that’s not good,” Scott said.

On Oct. 25, a parking enforcement officer found the van, which was parked illegally in La Puente.

Inside the van was enough blood “to suggest that someone could have died or something might have happened in that van,” Scott said.

The detective refused to speculate on what motives Gomez might have had. The siblings came to know each other only five years ago, and Rosas went out of her way to help Gomez, relatives said. She let him live on the family’s property and tried to find construction jobs for him.

Cesar Rosas was on tour in New Orleans with Los Lobos when his wife disappeared.

On Monday, a representative for the musical group acknowledged that as time passes in cases of this type, there is diminished hope for finding the victim alive.

The popular band was founded in East Los Angeles in 1973.