Woman’s Killer Found but He Dies Before Arrest

Ventura County law enforcement officials have pinned the slaying of a woman shot last year as she sat in a parked car near a Ventura golf course on an Oxnard man who died before authorities could arrest him.

Elmer Zepeda, 26, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in July -- weeks before crime lab technicians matched his blood to a genetic profile of Irene Mata’s killer, a prosecutor said Monday.

“There is no doubt based on the DNA results,” Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Simon said. “It was confirmed.”

Simon said authorities are not certain whether Zepeda knew he was a suspect in the slaying of Mata, 22, a Port Hueneme mother of two young children, or whether his death was accidental or a suicide. They also have been unable to determine a motive for killing Mata.

But they are certain, Simon said, that Zepeda shot Mata once in the head as the two sat in a Chevy Camaro in the 3000 block of Bunsen Avenue near Buenaventura Golf Course on July 26, 2002.

Witnesses reported hearing a disagreement between Mata and a man before the shooting. They stated that after the shooting, the Camaro rear-ended an abandoned van on Bunsen Avenue and a Latino male wearing a white T-shirt ran from the car, carrying an object.

Ventura Police Department officers found the firearm used to kill Mata, a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun, in bushes nearby and found a white T-shirt spattered with her blood on the golf course.

During a yearlong investigation, Simon said, crime lab technicians were able to extract a DNA profile of the killer from sweat on the T-shirt.

At the same time, detectives interviewed people who knew Mata and concluded that she probably knew the gunman. Simon said Zepeda’s name kept coming up, and detectives began to look for him in hopes of obtaining a DNA sample.

Authorities eventually obtained a sample from a pair of Zepeda’s shoes that the Oxnard Police Department had collected during an unrelated shooting investigation in which Zepeda had been injured and bled on the footwear, Simon said.

The test results confirmed a match to the DNA of Mata’s killer, but not before Zepeda fatally shot himself, Simon said.

Prosecutors dropped a first-degree murder charge against an earlier suspect, alleged Oxnard gang member Harold Marshall, after the same DNA evidence exonerated him in the killing.