Jesse Strobel’s Killer Gets 3 1/2 Years in Youth Prison : Courts: Teen victim’s family sought stiffer penalty than in juvenile proceeding. Jose ‘Pepe’ Castillo faces murder charges in another case.

The 21-year-old confessed killer of Ventura teen Jesse Strobel was ordered Friday to serve 3 1/2 years in a youth prison, although the sentence may never be served because the defendant is now facing charges in a capital murder case.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren told Strobel’s family during an emotional court hearing that he knows the punishment is inadequate, but that legally he could not do more.

“The system of justice is a good system,” Perren said, “but it is not a perfect system.”

Strobel, a 17-year-old student-athlete, was stabbed in the chest and left to die as he walked home from his father’s pizzeria Jan. 29, 1993. He crawled on bloody hands and knees through a dark residential neighborhood in search of help.

Last month, Jose “Pepe” Castillo admitted to the crime in court.

But because he was only 15 at the time of the slaying, and the law in 1993 did not allow minors to be tried as adults for serious crimes, the most severe sentence he can receive under the law is confinement in a California Youth Authority facility until age 25, or 3 1/2 years.

The law in California has since changed. But that brought little comfort to the Strobel family, who pleaded with Perren to impose a harsher penalty.

“I’m sickened by the fact this is a juvenile proceeding,” said the victim’s father, John Strobel IV. “You’ve got to understand this is the most difficult thing any parent can go through.”

For two hours, 16 family members and friends described how Jesse Strobel’s murder devastated their lives. The crime left a path of emotional wreckage--including alcoholism, depression and anxiety attacks--on those who loved him.

“To this day, I can still see my brother’s bloody handprints on the door where he pounded for help,” said Jackson Strobel, 17, the victim’s brother. “Why? Why would anyone do this to such a beautiful boy?”

“I still struggle with my brother’s death,” he continued. “I will ride this wave of grief, but unlike my brother, my life will go on.”

Throughout the court proceeding, Castillo sat hunched over the defense table, sandwiched between his two lawyers and scribbling on a yellow legal pad. Dressed in jail blues with his dark hair cropped short, he rarely looked up and avoided eye contact with the victim’s relatives.

At one point, the prosecution played excerpts from a videotape in which Jesse Strobel is seen playing a saxophone at age 10, grinning and laughing before honking out a series of off-key notes.

Castillo didn’t look up at the television screen.

“For a reason I will never understand, Jose Castillo chose to murder my son,” mother Claudia Moore said after the tape ended. “Personally, I think they should lock him up and throw away the key.”

Afterward, Perren declared Castillo a ward of the court and ordered him to serve the maximum confinement in a youth authority facility until age 25.

“This act was as wrong, as awful, as cruel, as I’ve ever seen,” Perren told the family. “When that knife pierced Jesse, it pierced the family, it pierced the community and it pierced the system.”

After the hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy said Castillo will probably never step foot in a youth facility, because he is being held in Ventura County Jail on another murder charge.

In July, Castillo was indicted by the grand jury on charges of murder, burglary and attempted robbery in the June 1998 slaying of Mirna Regollar, 25, at her family’s market in Santa Paula. A mother of two, Regollar was fatally shot in the head and chest.

Prosecutors decided this week to seek the death penalty. They said Strobel’s slaying weighed heavily in that decision.

But some members of Strobel’s family said Friday that they are not looking for vengeance or a death sentence--just answers to the questions that haunt them still.

“As hard as I’ve tried, I can’t hate the defendant,” said John Strobel III, the victim’s grandfather. “Instead I try to fathom the circumstances that brought him to this place.”

Castillo of Santa Paula has been described by authorities as a gang member. His court-appointed attorney said he is a troubled young man whose life took a dangerous turn as a result of childhood abuse and neglect.

“I believe Pepe had the problems, the environment, we see in virtually 100% of cases like this,” said Deputy Public Defender Robert Willey. “Think of a ship, not only without a rudder, but without a wheel--with nobody to steer it, nobody to guide it--trying to find its way through rocky shoals.”

While he didn’t show it in court, Willey said, Castillo feels remorse for killing Strobel.

The slaying shocked the Ventura community. Strobel, a bright student and member of the varsity football team at Ventura High School, was walking home about 10 p.m. when he was confronted by a carload of young men just a few blocks from his home.

They tried to rob him but Strobel fought back, police said. Castillo stabbed Strobel in the chest and then the group drove away.

For six years, police struggled to solve the case. The break came after Regollar’s slaying when an informant told authorities Castillo had participated in both crimes.

Murphy said that no other arrests have been made in connection with Strobel’s stabbing, although the case remains under investigation.

Some of Strobel’s relatives said Friday they will never have closure until the other men in the car are prosecuted. In the meantime, they asked for justice that the law could not provide.

“I know the law has changed,” the victim’s mother said. “But it’s insanity that a confessed killer will be walking the streets in three years unless he is found guilty of another murder.”