Excavation of Alleged Burial Site Begins

Mexican authorities equipped with a backhoe and shovels began excavating a hillside in this border city Friday, searching for the remains of three people who an informant says were killed and buried at the site by two Los Angeles police officers.

Investigators unearthed clothing, blankets and numerous other items, but did not appear to have unearthed human remains by the time they stopped digging at 6:30 p.m. Mexican federal officials at the scene declined to comment on the investigation. They were expected to resume digging this morning.

The effort, which followed nearly two weeks of intense negotiations between U.S. and Mexican authorities, is aimed at corroborating the allegations of 23-year-old Sonia Flores.

While an assistant U.S. attorney and two FBI agents were involved in the negotiations over the dig from the start, the U.S. authorities played little if any role in the excavation Friday.

Flores is a former lover of Rafael Perez, the ex-police officer at the center of the LAPD’s unfolding corruption scandal. She has alleged to authorities that she witnessed Perez and another former Los Angeles Police Department officer, David Mack, kill two people during a botched cocaine deal in the mid-1990s.

Flores alleges that the bodies of the victims, a young man and a woman who appeared to be his mother, along with that of another woman allegedly killed by Mack, were driven here and buried in the middle of the night.

Perez and Mack are two of the LAPD’s most infamous former officers. Perez is a convicted drug thief; Mack is a convicted bank robber. Both men were police officers when the killings allegedly were committed.

Law enforcement officials are skeptical about Flores’ assertions, but they have gone to considerable lengths to determine whether she is telling the truth. The FBI has conducted forensic tests on the apartment near downtown Los Angeles where Flores says the double homicide was committed.

Investigators have also obtained a search warrant and seized a 1986 BMW belonging to another police officer that she said was used to help transport two of the bodies.

One law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said tests on the car did reveal the presence of a small amount of blood. But the significance of that finding was unclear. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that the amount of blood was so small that it could be the result of a cut finger or some other minor injury.

The source also said investigators have not found evidence that anybody was reported missing from the apartment when the killings allegedly took place.

Nonetheless, the source said, Flores appears to know Perez much better than he is willing to admit. Therefore, her information cannot be easily dismissed.

“We can’t get our arms around this thing,” the source said. “I can’t figure out what her motive would be. That leads us to believe there maybe is something to it.”

Flores has been given an immunity agreement that precludes her prosecution for any crimes in which she implicates herself.

Her attorney, Marshall Bitkower, said he has no doubts about his client’s veracity.

“I believe her absolutely, 100%,” said Bitkower, a former prosecutor. “She’s put her life at risk.”

Bitkower said he believes the ravine’s excavation will confirm Flores’ story. “They will either find bodies, or, if they have the proper equipment, find that bodies were buried there and then moved.”

About 10 a.m. Friday, more than a dozen Mexican federal agents and prosecutors descended on the trash-strewn spot where Flores said the bodies were buried. The area was first cleared with a backhoe. Then investigators began using picks and shovels.

They stopped periodically to examine clothing, blankets, shoes and other items that caught their attention. Neighbors peered down from balconies and through backyard chain-link fences into the secluded area that locals say once attracted drug addicts and transients.

The recovery effort could be made more difficult, some neighbors said, as a result of flooding two years ago that caused a mudslide in the ravine.

Negotiating the terms of the excavation was no easy task, according to Bitkower. Flores underwent hours of interrogation by Mexican authorities. They then transcribed her statement and required her to review and sign the 25-page document. She also had to review and sign a series of photographs depicting the scene.

One U.S. law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was surprised that it took nearly two weeks to obtain approval for the dig.

“Obviously, this has been more difficult than anyone had imagined,” he said.

Flores’ allegations against Perez are a direct challenge to his credibility as a witness against four of his former colleagues in the Rampart Division, whose trial on corruption-related charges began last week.

Although Perez has admitted to a host of crimes during his tenure as an LAPD officer, he said that he did not become corrupt until he joined the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit in 1995, and that he never committed any crimes with Mack, his former friend and partner.

Winston Kevin McKesson, Perez’s attorney, said his client had nothing to do with the alleged killings. Despite the denial, McKesson said Perez will refuse to testify about the alleged slayings unless he is guaranteed that they are covered by a plea bargain he entered into with prosecutors last year.

“If the authorities take the position that these alleged crimes are within the agreement, then Perez will answer any and all questions,” McKesson said. “On the other hand, if the authorities take the position that these alleged crimes are not within the agreement, he will exercise his 5th Amendment right [against self-incrimination] to not answer any questions that deal with these alleged crimes.’

Mack is serving a 14-year sentence for a bank robbery he committed in 1997 when he was an LAPD officer. Donald M. Re, the lawyer who represented him in that case, has not returned telephone calls seeking comment about Flores’ allegations.

Prosecutors and police investigators have said they suspect Perez and Mack were criminal associates, though no proof of such misconduct has been produced.

Those suspicions grew when investigators learned that the two officers, along with another of Perez’s girlfriends, a drug dealer, went on a spending spree in Las Vegas two days after Mack robbed a Bank of America branch of $722,000.

Investigators also suspect that Perez is lying about his relationship with Flores. Perez acknowledges having had a single sexual encounter with Flores. Flores said she dated Perez for years, beginning when she was 16.

In a move that bolstered her credibility, Flores led investigators unassisted to the “crash pad” apartment that anti-gang officers kept near the Rampart station. She also knew where Perez lived with his family.

In an interview with The Times, Flores said she told investigators that she accompanied Perez and Mack one night in late 1994 or early 1995 to a second-story apartment on Bellevue Avenue, west of downtown Los Angeles, for what was supposed to be a drug transaction. Once there, a dispute over money broke out between the two officers and a man Flores knew as “Chino.”

The dispute, Flores alleged, escalated until Perez and Mack killed Chino and a woman, who appeared to be Chino’s mother. The next day, Flores said, Perez and Mack threatened to kill her and her family if she said anything about the killings.