Pair Slain for Car, Prosecutor Says

A 16-year-old Santa Paula boy slipped through an unlocked door of a neighbor’s house and beat a sleeping couple to death with a baseball bat so he could take their car for a joy ride with friends, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

“He wanted to drive the car,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John C. West said outside court after several hours of testimony on the first day of the preliminary hearing for Adam Sarabia.”It’s not rational behavior. Don’t try to put a rational explanation to it,” West said.

Sarabia, who would be tried as an adult if the case goes to trial, is charged with first-degree murder, burglary and robbery in connection with the Oct. 21 slayings of John Ramirez Jr., 59, and his wife, Joann Wotkyns, 55.

The youth sat motionless at the defense table as three of his friends testified they drove around with him in the Special Edition 2001 Chevy Monte Carlo that belonged to Wotkyns -- smoking marijuana and showing the car off to girls -- on the same day the woman and her husband were found bludgeoned and stabbed inside their home on Corte La Brisa.

Sarabia told the teens a friend let him borrow the car, described as black with gray-checkered racing stripes down the sides, the witnesses testified Tuesday.

When one of the boys, Paul Cardona, saw a picture of the car in a newspaper days later in connection with the killings, Sarabia had told him “a friend probably did the murders” and that was why he lent him the car, Cardona said.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Jay Johnson tried to poke holes in the teenager’s account, asking Cardona repeatedly if he remembered details of that day or if he was “just guessing.”

Dozens of relatives of Sarabia and the victims packed the courtroom Tuesday, some weeping as an investigator detailed the couple’s injuries.

Ramirez and Wotkyns each suffered multiple stab wounds, several deep cuts to the head and face as well as baseball bat-sized bruises across their bodies, said Daniel Thompson, an investigator with the Ventura County district attorney’s office.

During the autopsy on Wotkyns, medical examiners found flecks of gold and black metallic paint embedded in her skull, Thompson testified. When Santa Paula police searched Sarabia’s home in early November, they recovered a black aluminum baseball bat with gold lettering in the boy’s garage, Thompson said.

Thompson also testified that a forensic scientist found traces of blood on the bat, as well as cotton fibers in red and black -- the colors of the T-shirts Ramirez and Wotkyns were wearing. And when Sarabia was interviewed by investigators, Thompson said, he wore a hooded sweatshirt that was spattered with blood.

Prosecutors have said they have DNA evidence that will link Sarabia with the killings. West said he agreed to leave the DNA evidence out of the hearing at Johnson’s request in order to get on with the inquiry.

Testimony will continue Thursday. If the case goes to trial and Sarabia is convicted, he would face a maximum of life in prison without possibility of parole.