Another Girl Testifies Against Avila

A second girl whom Alejandro Avila was acquitted of molesting testified Wednesday that Avila molested her at least 50 times several years before he allegedly kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered Samantha Runnion.

The girl, now 14, testified in Orange County Superior Court that the incidents occurred when her mother was dating and sharing a Lake Elsinore apartment with Avila in the late 1990s. At the time, the girl and her two brothers lived with their father in the same Orange County condominium complex as Samantha and visited their mother on alternate weekends.

The girl’s mother testified Wednesday that she considered her three-year relationship with Avila “odd.”

Avila rarely wanted to have sex, she said. He also encouraged her to dress up in “junior-style clothing,” she said.

The pair’s testimony is considered key as the prosecution tries to establish that Avila, 30, is predisposed to committing sex crimes and was familiar with the Stanton neighborhood where 5-year-old Samantha was abducted.

Samantha was abducted July 15, 2002, as she played with a friend outside her condo. Her nude body was found the next day off Ortega Highway, a mountain road that connects Riverside and Orange counties.

Assistant Dist. Atty. David Brent has said that investigators don’t know where or when Samantha was killed. But he told jurors that bank and cellphone records would show that Avila was in the Stanton area when Samantha was abducted and that DNA evidence would prove he attacked her and that she was in his car.

Defense attorneys contend that the DNA evidence is “soft” and that their client is being framed by overzealous investigators who were under pressure to solve a case that came during a summer of other high-profile crimes against children -- the murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam of San Diego and the abduction of teenager Elizabeth Smart in Utah.

Avila, they say, spent a lonely night driving around trying -- and failing -- to reunite with a girlfriend as authorities scoured the region for Samantha.

Avila was acquitted in 2001 in Riverside County of molestation charges involving Wednesday’s 14-year-old witness and her cousin. But Orange County Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg ruled that previous accusers could testify for the limited purpose of establishing whether Avila was predisposed to commit the sexual crimes for which he is now on trial.

The girl testified that Avila bathed her, showered with her and showed her adult pornography films.

Among other things, she said, Avila penetrated her with a glass test tube. She said she didn’t tell her mother until after the couple broke up because Avila had threatened her.