Post by Scumhunter on May 15, 2015 10:02:09 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: amw.com archives)
Burbank, California police are hoping that they can finally charge a cold case murder suspect a decade after a young woman was found dead.
The woman- 30-year old Sharon Anne Santos, was first profiled as a missing person on AMW's website before the case became a homicide investigation. Below is the archive description of the case:
"Missing Woman Found in Trunk of Car
After weeks of fruitless searching, police discovered the body of Sharon Santos in the trunk of her car on Friday,September 3rd. Police have not yet revealed a cause of death, but are investigating it as a homicide and are asking for the public's help in discovering who is responsible for Sharon's murder.
Sharon was first reported missing on August 18th. She left her job at the Warner Brothers studio in Burbank, California and was headed home to her apartment nearby. Her wallet, money, credit cards and other personal belongings were all found in her apartment. Her door was locked and there was no sign of forced entry, but Sharon and her car were gone.
For three weeks, a desperate search was undertaken. With few clues to go on, police and family were dumbfounded as to what could have happened to the successful, attractive and well-liked financial analyst. Her co-workers, who reported her missing, had no idea what could have happened to their friend.
Car Abandoned for Days Before Discovery
While police in Burbank searched for Sharon, police in Burbank were getting complaints about an abandoned car near Chinatown. The car had been issued a ticket, which remained on the windshield for days, and neighbors began to notice a foul odor emanating from the black Honda Accord.
On September 3rd, police impounded the car, and when they opened the trunk, they found the source of the odor - a badly decomposed body. Because of the deterioration, it was hard to identify the body and nearly impossible to tell the cause of death. Tests by the crime lab are underway.
Then, the next day, on September 4th, police made the announcement that Sharon's family feared. The woman in the trunk was Sharon. They believe that she had been in the trunk for a number of days, but have not discussed what happened to Sharon in the days and weeks after her disappearance.
Police are now investigating all aspects of Sharon's life to determine what may have been the motive in Sharon's murder, and are leaving all investigative avenues open. They are hoping that a member of the public may have some information that would lead them in the right direction and are pleading with the public to come forward."
There are a now a few updates in the case involving a man who Burbank, Police have suspected all along. The following are excerpts from the Los Angeles Daily News:
Burbank police say they are still investigating Sharon Santos’ murder and hope they’ll produce strong enough evidence to hand to prosecutors for possible murder charges, said Sgt. Sean Kelley, who was the lead investigator on the case for years.
The only suspect identified in her slaying is Eriberto “Eddie” Rodriguez , a former Los Angeles Police Department officer and twice convicted sex offender who worked as a handyman at the upscale Scott Villa Apartments in Burbank where Santos lived. The 53-year-old man is serving a 12-year prison sentence for more than a dozen counts related to burglary and theft, including of Santos’ apartment. He is also serving time for sexual battery, false imprisonment and assault with intent to commit rape and sodomy involving a housekeeper who worked at the same complex.
Rodriguez, who has not been charged in Santos’ killing and has repeatedly denied involvement in her death to police, is scheduled to be released from prison in the latter half of 2016, said Luis Patino, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“(We) are doing what we can and we do have the pressure that he’s getting out of prison — and that’s always a concern,” Kelley said.
A 2008 civil trial initiated by Edna Santos resulted in a verdict of $10.8 million against Scott Villa Apartments in Burbank and Francis Property Management Inc. and $1.2 million against Rodriguez based on the jury’s finding that the complex negligently hired a sex offender, gave him access to tenants’ apartments and that he was the killer. The case was appealed twice, another trial was ordered and both sides settled for an undisclosed amount in November 2013, according to attorneys in the case.
According to court documents, among the admissible evidence presented in the civil trial and accepted by the state Court of Appeal in an effort to demonstrate Rodriguez killed Santos was: A ring Santos wore every day disappeared some weeks before she went missing and was found in Rodriguez’s apartment after her body was discovered; Rodriguez told a workman that the victim was a “fine (expletive)” and that he wouldn’t mind “doing her”; and after Santos had gone missing but before her body was found, Rodriguez told the same workman that Santos was “dead” and appeared “nervous” when someone joked “Why did you do it?”
“It was sad to me that the criminal justice system wouldn’t at least prosecute (Rodriguez) with the evidence we discovered in the civil case,” Lawrence P. Grassini, who represented Edna Santos, said. “We thought that would be enough to convict him. Of course, they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but I thought that the evidence we presented was overwhelming and so did a jury.”
However, an attorney for Scott Villa apartments argued that these points failed to prove Rodriguez actually killed Santos.
“Rodriguez was a horrible person, a bad individual,” said William Baumgaertner , a Los Angeles-based attorney retained by the complex after the jury verdict. “If the lawsuit was simply limited to bad hiring, clearly, our client should have been found liable, but the issue really was — was the bad hiring the cause of Sharon Santos’ death? Our position was always that the plaintiffs could not prove that.”
Most telling, he said, is the fact that Rodriguez has not been charged in the woman’s murder more than a decade after her death.
“If cops don’t have probable cause to charge the guy ... why should we believe there’s probable cause that he was the murderer?” he said.
A Violent Past
Rodriguez was hired by the LAPD as an officer in May 1987 and went through six months of rigorous training with the police academy before he was assigned to Central Division patrol in November 1987, a clerk with the LAPD’s Personnel Records Department said. He left the department in January 1988 for undisclosed reasons.
In 1996, Rodriguez pleaded guilty to one felony count of sexual battery by restraint for which he was sentenced to one year in county jail and five years’ probation, according to a spokeswoman with the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office.
Victim Nivia Molina, who worked at a market with Rodriguez, testified that he lured her to his apartment in 1994, then bound and raped her at knife point. She managed to escape by jumping out a window while handcuffed and then screaming for help, according to Court of Appeal documents. Rodriguez fled to Mexico and about two years later was extradited from Illinois to California for prosecution.
Rodriguez was also sentenced in March 2006 for sexual crimes against housekeeper Petra Sandoval, who worked for several tenants at Scott Villa Apartments. According to Sandoval’s testimony, Rodriguez attacked her and tried to take her clothes off on two occasions in one day but she resisted. He ended up masturbating in front of her and holding her from behind, according to the court documents.
Both Molina and Sandoval said they feared for their lives.
No Murder Charges
Rodriguez didn’t emerge as a person of interest until at least a month or two into the investigation, Kelley said, and he wasn’t arrested on burglary and other charges until five months after Santos’ body was found.
Complicating the case’s resolution is significant decomposition of her body, which was located about two weeks after she was killed, he said. In addition, the killer extensively wiped down the trunk area of the car and apparently took other deliberate steps to eliminate evidence, he said.
“Whoever did it wasn’t sloppy,” Kelley said.
Kelley said he’s had prior discussions with L.A. County prosecutors about the case. However, they didn’t feel there was enough to prove to a jury what happened and who the killer was.
“Absent a confession or a witness coming forward, the most likely evidence to solve the case would be scientific related, such as DNA,” Kelley said.
But he acknowledged the most recent testing of evidence done this past fall has “not resulted in anything that is making us take the case back to the DA’s Office at this time.”
Meanwhile, Edna Santos says she struggles to erase the awful memories of her daughter’s murder from her mind. No matter how hard she reaches for an answer, she said, none ever comes. But one thing gives her solace.
“There is a higher authority that will justify all this,” she said.
Thoughts? I think this would make an excellent case for Cold Justice- it seems they have a prime suspect but don't have just enough quite yet to get them to be able to finally charge him.
Admin Note #1: According to online news articles, Anyone with information about this case is urged to call the Burbank Police Department’s detective division at 818-238-3210.
Admin Note #2: If you have any news-related updates on this case, please contact us here: amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form
web.archive.org/web/20060214202208/http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=28195
www.dailynews.com/general-news/20150126/homicides-of-women-more-likely-to-be-solved-involve-an-intimate-partner
www.websleuths.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-11780.html