Posted on 07/19/2002 8:31:09 PM PDT by TheOtherOne
USA: UPDATE 5-Police '100 percent' sure they have Samantha killer.
By Dan Whitcomb
22:09 ET
Reuters English News Service
(C) Reuters Limited 2002.
LOS ANGELES, July 19 (Reuters) - A southern California man will be charged with the abduction and murder of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion , a police official said on Friday, adding that detectives had no doubt that the 27-year-old factory worker was the little girl's killer.
Alejandro Avila, who was acquitted of molesting two other young girls in 2000, was taken into custody Friday morning in the case that has terrified parents across California and transfixed much of the nation.
Prosecutors were expected to file charges against Avila in the coming days.
"I am 100 percent certain that Mr. Avila is the man who kidnapped and murdered Samantha Runnion ," Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona said. "We believe that our physical evidence and the investigative information we pulled together (and) the help we received from the public combined will prove that he in fact is that individual."
Carona, appearing at a press conference, also addressed Avila personally.
"I told you, Mr. Avila, that we would be relentless," he said. "When I told you we would hunt you down wherever you were, if you thought for one minute that I was joking - that we were joking - tonight you know we were deadly serious."
Avila, who lives in Lake Elsinore, California about 10 miles (16 km) from the lonely spot on a two-lane forest road where Samantha's bruised and naked body was found, was arrested on one of the more than 2,000 tips from the public.
According to court records, Avila was charged in nearby Riverside County in 2000 with one count of a lewd act on a child under the age of 14, two counts of lewd acts on a child under the age of 14 using force, violence or duress and one count of criminal threats.
He was acquitted after a week-long trial, which stemmed from the alleged molestation of two 10-year-old girls, the daughter and niece of his then-girlfriend.
The daughter, identified in court papers only as Catherine, reportedly lived in the same quiet apartment complex as Samantha, in Stanton, Orange County, some 30 miles (48 km) south of Los Angeles.
SAMANTHA'S MURDER PUTS PARENTS ON EDGE
The brazen daylight abduction, and the warning that her killer could strike again soon, touched a nerve across the United States, where the kidnappings of two other girls - 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in Utah and 7-year-old Danielle van Dam in San Diego - have dominated the news.
Police were reportedly alerted to Avila by his former girlfriend and the manager of his apartment complex, who noticed him closely examining his car, a green Ford Thunderbird, in the days after Samantha's murder.
Detectives were reportedly also doubtful of Avila's alibi - that he was shopping alone at a mall at about the time that Samantha was snatched from her driveway - and noticed that he had scratches on his legs. Samantha's playmate, a 5-year-old girl who was the only witness to the kidnapping, said the man who snatched her friend sped off in a light green car.
"I have got to thank Sara. She is an incredible witness....She has been magnificent all through this. She made the comment the other day that she was not sad anymore because she knows Samantha is in heaven," Carona said on Friday.
Avila told the Los Angeles Times in an interview posted on its Web site that he was innocent of the crime. He said police grilled him for more than 12 hours about Samantha's murder and told him they had found fibers on the corpse which they could link to him.
Carona said Avila had been "cooperative throughout the entire process."
Samantha's body, which police said had been left purposely exposed by her killer, was found by two men whose terrified call to emergency operators was made public on Friday. On the chilling tape, a man identified only as Justin tells the operator that he and a friend had stumbled across the body by a forest roadside.
"It's a baby," Justin said. "I think it might even be the little girl that's been on the news. It's a little girl, I swear. We just looked and as soon as we seen, I left."
Carona said the girl had died from suffocation after spending several hours with her killer, who had also sexually assaulted her. Samantha's body was found less than 24 hours after she was snatched, kicking and screaming, by a man who claimed to be looking for a lost puppy.
Danielle van Dam vanished from her canopied bed in suburban San Diego on Feb. 1, her badly decomposing body found three weeks later dumped on a roadside. Elizabeth Smart was marched from her Salt Lake City home at gunpoint on the night of June 5 and has not been seen since.
I wish the sheriff had not used that phrase. The defense is going to claim a poisoned jury pool and request a change of venue. The POS that committed this crime deserves a fair and speedy trail before we juice him. I hope the sheriffs statements are not harmful to prosecution.
However, the death penalty is a valid means by which society renders judgement of such acts.
May I suggest that the appropriate method would be to toss him naked and defenseless into a pit filled with wild carnivores?
It is not a "cruel and unusual" punishment in that carnivores such as wolves, lions, tigers, cougars, etc. are natural predators.
Witnesses to such an execution are necessary to satisfy the legal requirements of our judicial system, but it should not be presented in any form to the general public where it would risk being turned into a bizarre spectacle.
Oh, stop grandstanding and fry him already..
They can claim it all they want. No judge is going to release this predator even if every one of his constitutional rights were violated. If the evidence points to guilt, then the evidence is going to come in. If the defense claims a poisoned jury pool, then the judge will tell them to pound sand.
This is not the kind of case that will make constitutional law. Nobody will touch it. Prostitute killings and drug killings are the cases that generate constitutional decisions. Child killings are a horse of a different color. Especially stranger kidnappings that result in murder. If the evidence points to guilt, then the evidence will come in, no matter how the evidence was obtained. If the defense claims a tainted jury pool, The jury will be seated and the appellate courts will rule that any violation of his rights is "harmless error." This guy is NOT going to get off on a technicality.
I am very glad they caught the guy, but I agree. Am I the only one who thought that address to the media was grandstanding as well?
You don't score points over the death of a little girl---period! I don't care who you are.
Maybe that's not such a bad thing after all. If OJ had been tried in a place like, say, Texas or Louisiana, he'd have assumed room temperature long before now.
Send him here for his trial. I never heard anything about this case.
Really.
I'd vote for letting every member of Samantha's Family have him for about an hour each - no reporters - no cameras - nothing...
...then..... if there is anything left over - hang that and leave it there until it rots and falls off the rope.
Then burn the rope and send the ashes to his family......for something to remember him by.....
One question, though, and I'm possibly showing my ignorance on this - but, isn't a noose supposed to have 13 knots ??
....just curious.....
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