Fugitive sought in 3 slayings returned to U.S.
A Mexican fugitive arrested last fall in Acapulco is scheduled to be charged today in Ventura County Superior Court for the 2004 slayings of an Oxnard college student and a Kern County couple.
Rudolfo Negrete, 25, was returned to the county Wednesday afternoon after spending six months in a prison near Mexico City, authorities said.
Negrete was living illegally in Oxnard on April 16, 2004, when college student Daniel Campos, 21, was shot in the back of the head and his body left in a strawberry field south of Camarillo.
The next afternoon, a campus police officer at Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo found the bodies of Kern County residents Alexander Lee Jordan, 24, and his pregnant wife, Cynthia J. Jordan, 22, who had been killed execution style within hours of Campos.
Their bodies were found a few miles from Campos’ in a wooded area off Potrero Road. The 2002 Chevrolet Impala belonging to the Taft couple, who were thought to be on a weekend excursion to the beach, had been stolen.
A month after the slayings, Ventura County sheriff’s detectives announced that Negrete, who was initially linked to Campos’ death, was also a suspect in the Jordans’ killings and that a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.
The slayings were the subject of nationwide news reports, and Negrete was profiled several times on television’s “America’s Most Wanted.”
Law enforcement has not revealed a motive for Campos’ slaying or a link between him and the Jordans.
Negrete was arrested leaving a residence in Acapulco on Oct. 20, 2006.
Since then, the U.S. Justice Department and the federal Marshals Service had been seeking Negrete’s extradition.
Chief Inspector John Clark of the U.S. Marshals Service in Los Angeles said Negrete’s return went smoothly. A team from the agency escorted Negrete on a commercial flight from Mexico to Los Angeles, where the suspect was met by representatives from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
“He was in Mexican custody for about six months, which suggests that things went very smoothly on the legal side of things,” Clark said Thursday. “That’s the quickest I’ve seen in an international extradition.”
*
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
