Crime Beat by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

help of the unit. Because they are illegal aliens, they can be shipped back without lengthy extradition proceedings.
    Other Kinds of Cases
    Although most of its time has been spent on murder cases in Mexico, the foreign prosecution unit has been used on occasion in child abuse, robbery and auto theft investigations. And its officers have pursued murder cases in other countries where laws allow prosecution of foreign crimes. Two cases have been brought in El Salvador, one in France and one investigation is pending in Honduras.
    The crimes that lead the officers across the border are quite varied, involving both Mexican and American victims.
    Lorraine Kiefer, 70, was a well-liked Van Nuys widow and retired real-estate broker who worked without pay at an American Cancer Society thrift shop. In 1980, she had married Gilberto Flores, a longtime acquaintance who was 38 years her junior. Four years later, police said, Flores hired a second man, Andreas Hernandez Santiago, to kill her for $5,000.
    Filed in Mexico
    After detectives unraveled the Oct. 2, 1984, killing, the case was filed in Mexico, where the two men, both Mexican nationals, had fled. Santiago was arrested in Oaxaca and later convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Flores is still being sought.
    In one of the first cases handled by the unit in 1985, Juan Francisco Rocha, 36, was arrested in Monterrey, Mexico, for the killing in Hollywood of his girlfriend, Brenda Joyce Abbud, a decade earlier. She had been doused with paint thinner and set on fire.
    “Many of the cases have strong impacts on their communities,” Zorrilla said.
    The Dec. 8, 1980, killing of Lisa Ann Rosales was such a case, prompting the Los Angeles City Council to offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. A local high school started a college scholarship in Lisa’s name and an elementary school named a garden after her.
    There were few solid leads until a woman called police anonymously in 1985, saying her conscience bothered her and that she wanted them to know that Castro, who worked as a maintenance man at the Rosales home, was the killer. That lead gave the case a new focus, and police said more evidence was uncovered against Castro.
    Castro, who had returned to Mexico weeks after the killing, confessed shortly after he was arrested in Mexicali in 1986, according to police in both countries.

COPS ACCUSED
MURDER SUSPECT SEEKS TO CLEAR NAME WITH LAWSUITS
Mary Kellel-Sophiea says homicide investigators wrongfully tried to pin her husband’s slaying on her. The detectives still believe she’s guilty.
    LOS ANGELES TIMES
    September 15, 1991
    M ARY KELLEL-SOPHIEA says she is on trial for murder. But it was her choice.
    For more than two months last year, she faced a possible death sentence after being charged with the murder of her estranged husband. On Jan. 31, 1990, Gregory Sophiea was stabbed to death in his bed in the Shadow Hills home that the couple had shared for five years.
    But then a prosecutor dropped the charges against her, telling a judge he did not have enough evidence to proceed with the case in court.
    A year and a half later, the additional evidence has not been found. But Kellel-Sophiea is back in court. She is suing her accusers, charging two Los Angeles police detectives with violating her rights by arresting her without cause and conspiring to frame her with a murder she did not commit.
    The two-week-old civil trial before a jury in U.S. District Court has unfolded much like that of a murder trial.
    Detectives testified about their investigation and identified an 18-year-old transient who has been convicted of the murder and who they believe conspired with Kellel-Sophiea to kill her husband. A medical examiner discussed the details of the autopsy. A next-door neighbor told the jury about finding the dead man and the blood-spattered butcher knife.
    Though no death sentence rides on the jury’s verdict, the 10-member panel will, in effect, be asked to