After 13 Years and a Family’s Ordeal, a Killer Is Sentenced

The only thing Sylvia Guevara could feel good about Friday was that she may never again have to see the inside of a courtroom.

In a long row of teary-eyed family members, Guevara watched as Robert Garcia, the last of her niece’s three killers, was sentenced to 29 years to life in the fatal shooting of 14-year-old Lilly Guevara at a party after a 1991 Tustin football game.

“Our time in court is all finished now,” said Guevara, 51, of Westminster after the hearing was over.

“But as far as the pain goes, it will always be as bad as it was the first day, the first moment.”

The hearing in Judge Francisco P. Briseno’s Santa Ana courtroom marked the end of a 13-year ordeal that involved an international manhunt, the work of cold-case detectives, and snafus with Mexican law enforcement.

On Sept. 13, 1991, Lilly and three friends had watched Tustin High defeat rival Foothill High, 6-0, then decided to attend the birthday party of a friend of a friend.

After their car pulled up to the home in a rundown Tustin cul-de-sac, one of the boys riding with Lilly stepped out and got into a fistfight with someone -- police aren’t sure who -- in a crowd outside the party.

Lilly and the other friends drove away, but one of the men in the crowd -- Albert Guerrero, then 23, of Irvine -- fired at their car’s tires with a revolver.

Garcia, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, also was in the crowd, and also opened fire on the car.

One bullet struck Lilly in the chest, and she died hours later at a nearby hospital.

Within days, Guerrero’s brother, Ruben, then 24 and living in Lake Elsinore, was arrested. Jurors concluded he had also shot at the car, and he was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison for attempted murder and assault.

In 1995, the FBI found Albert Guerrero and Garcia in Mexico. They were arrested but soon released when a Mexican judge said key paperwork had vanished.

Sgt. Tom Tarpley of the Tustin Police Department was left baffled and angry at the border with his colleagues when they found out they would not be receiving the suspects.

“It was the most frustrating night of my career. I wasn’t right in my head for weeks afterward,” Tarpley said Friday. “But now we have resolution. Today is a victory.”

Guerrero was arrested again in 1996 and deported to the United States, where he was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for first-degree murder.

Cold-case detectives from the Orange County district attorney’s office found Garcia, now 33, two years ago. He had married in Las Vegas in 1999 and was living in Murrieta.

Investigators traced Garcia through paperwork he filled out when he leased a new truck. He was convicted Aug. 9 of first-degree murder.

Although glad the “incredibly frustrating” court process is over, Lilly’s aunt said the family will never stop mourning the waste of the girl’s life.

Lilly wanted to take advantage of her smile, perfect figure and glossy hair and become a model, her aunt said. She has no doubt her niece would have made it.

“She was so persistent,” Guevara said. “She would have become very famous. Her dreams would have become reality.”