Man Gets Life for Killing of Singer’s Wife

A Whittier man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole--plus 22 years--for the kidnap and murder of his half sister, the wife of Los Lobos singer-guitarist Cesar Rosas. Her body has never been found.

Reportedly overwhelmed with remorse after the sentencing, Gabriel Gomez, 40, led detectives, his attorney and two reporters to a Rowland Heights park in a nighttime search for the corpse of Sandra Rosas. The operation failed to turn up any sign of the woman and was called off after about two hours.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Clem said the search would resume this morning with the help of bloodhounds trained to sniff out human remains.

Gomez, he said, “indicated a couple of areas where Sandra Rosas’ body might be.”

Pomona Superior Court Judge Robert Martinez had told Gomez, that the Oct. 23, 1999, abduction and murder of Rosas from her Rowland Heights home would haunt him throughout his life behind bars.

“Although you smirk today . . . the smirk will be gone and reality will set in that you will be in prison for the rest of your life,” the judge said.

Martinez encouraged the defendant to reveal where he put his half sister’s body so her family could lay their loved one to rest. “If there is any decency in you, one day, perhaps, one day not too far away, you will provide them with it,” the judge said.

Defense attorney Antonio Bestard said that shortly after he was sentenced, Gomez “expressed a tremendous amount of remorse, especially after the comments of Mrs. Rosas’ sister.”

The sister, Stella Stauffer, had told the court that the victim had just wanted to help Gomez--but the man she tried to help was the devil.

After the sentencing, Gomez told veteran KTLA reporter Warren Wilson and a reporter for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that he believed the body could be found in the north end of Schabarum Regional Park, not far from Rosas’ home.

Given that his statements about the whereabouts of Rosas’ body came after sentencing, Bestard said Gomez was “not hoping for anything except closure for the family.”

“He feels very badly, very sad,” Bestard said. “He showed us where he thought the body was, but he said he wasn’t sure.”

Despite the lack of a body, Martinez said, the evidence was overwhelming that Gomez had murdered Rosas, 47, a woman who obviously loved him.

A jury took less than two hours to convict Gomez on Oct. 31 of first-degree murder, with the special circumstance that the killing occurred during a kidnapping.

Gomez on Thursday chose not to address the court, and prosecutors say the murder was too painful for Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, who testified in the case, to be present.

Rosas, who was adopted when she was a child, did not know Gomez, an ex-convict, until five years ago when she went searching for her biological family. Then she tried to help him financially, and he even worked as a roadie for her husband, Cesar Rosas testified.

Sandra Rosas disappeared on Oct. 23, 1999, and her daughters returned home that evening to find the front door wide open and smashed glass from their mother’s van on the driveway.

One daughter testified during the trial that she dialed her mother’s cellular phone number and heard Gomez say, “You can never leave me. I’m going to make mad, passionate love to you. I’m going to rape you. I’m going to strangle you.”

The victim’s van was found abandoned a few days later in nearby La Puente.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Clem used the testimony, along with DNA evidence showing traces of blood from Gomez and Rosas in the van, to connect the Whittier man with the crime.

Prosecutors believe Gomez attacked and killed Rosas in the van. A county Sheriff’s Department bloodhound traced Gomez’s scent from the van to a friend’s house in La Puente, testimony showed.

Clem told jurors that Gomez killed his half sister because he was jealous of the family’s fame and wealth stemming from the Grammy-winning rock group. He said Gomez feared she would cut him off from this “meal ticket.”

Bestard argued that the prosecution’s evidence was mostly circumstantial and it failed to prove that the kidnapping and murder even took place.