Man Held on Suspicion of Killing Girl 18 Years Ago in New York

A personal trainer in Los Angeles has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a girl who lived near him when he was a teenager on Long Island.

The arrest of Manuel Pacheco, 33, on Wednesday in Los Angeles brings a measure of peace--after nearly 20 years of waiting--to the family of Angela Wong.

Their 11-year-old daughter went for a walk one July afternoon in 1984 and never came back. The next morning, her body was found in a shallow creek in the woods a quarter mile from her home in Massapequa, on Long Island’s south shore.

One side of her face was bruised. Her pants were pulled down. Someone had held her head under water with a log and drowned her, police said.

In the years after the murder, Nassau County police pursued hundreds of leads and came up with nothing--until last week. Based on accounts from a former neighbor of Angela and a California woman, Pacheco was arrested March 20. He is being held without bail pending an extradition hearing Wednesday. Second-degree murder charges await him in New York.

Det. Michael Kuhn of the Nassau County homicide squad, along with his supervisor, William C. Cocks, deputy commanding officer of the homicide squad, kept track of witnesses over the years as they moved away and occasionally reinterviewed them.

Recently, during a routine check of those involved in the case, Kuhn learned that Pacheco had been arrested in Los Angeles on charges of molesting one of his children.

“He has a violent nature combined with sexual aggression, and that cried out for further investigation,” Cocks said.

Working with Los Angeles police, Kuhn said he and Cocks located one of Pacheco’s former girlfriends. The woman, whom police declined to name, said Pacheco told her he had killed Angela.

“She had enough details that we knew to be true,” Cocks said. “She’s very credible.”

Officers also reinterviewed a former neighbor of the Wongs, who told them she had seen Pacheco and Angela walk into the woods together that day. The woods was a shortcut used by neighborhood children to get to the mall, but Angela’s father had said that she would never venture there by herself.

Police said that Pacheco, then 15, had been one of the teenagers at Angela’s house the day of the murder, and that he told them after the killing that he had last seen Angela around 4:30 p.m.

Police said Pacheco moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and now works at a Los Angeles gym. He never married and has six children with three women.

Kuhn said Pacheco has hired attorney Christopher Darden, who prosecuted O.J. Simpson and has since gone into private practice. Darden could not be reached for comment.