After years of being bogged down in pretrial hearings, jury selection began yesterday and will continue through next week in the trial of David Del Toro, a veteran LAFD fire captain accused of torturing and murdering a 42-year-old woman whose nude, mangled and blood-stained body was found a few blocks away from his Eagle Rock home in August 2006.
At the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building on Temple Street downtown, the courtroom of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito—who presided over the O.J. Simpson trial—was crammed with people called to jury duty. Of the 50 jurors present, 27 were excused from jury duty—and potential jurors will continue to report to the courtroom in batches of approximately 50 until a jury is chosen by the end of next week.
"I'm so thrilled we've got 20 to start with," Judge Ito remarked during a break in court proceedings, referring to the court's shortlist of jurors. Del Toro, a rugged, heavy set man with green eyes, was present in the court, dressed in a dark suit. The actual trial—when witnesses will be cross-examined—is scheduled for Feb. 1 and the entire case must conclude by the judge's appointed deadline of Feb. 18.
The case of "People Vs. David Del Toro" has dragged on for years—the past three of which have consisted almost entirely of preliminary hearings. For those associated with the case—or anxiously awaiting a verdict—there's a certain sense of relief that it's finally heading to an end.
"It's not unusual for cases on what we call the high-profile [ninth] floor to take so long, says Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace, the lead prosecutor in the case. "You had a young woman who lost her life under circumstances that should not have occurred—and it has an LAFD connection." The case got "a lot of publicity at the time," adds Grace, "and the facts of the case are extraordinary."
The murder of Jennifer Flores shocked Eagle Rock. In the early hours of Aug. 16, 2006, according to transcripts of police reports and testimony from witnesses in a Grand Jury indictment delivered in November 2006, Eagle Rock resident Brenda Uranga was driving back home after working the graveyard shift at her job—and as she came to the 5100 block of Loleta Avenue, a palm-lined street that slopes upward from Colorado Boulevard to Hill Drive, she saw the partially nude body of a woman lying on the road. Thinking that the woman was drunk, Uranga got out of her car to help, but as she got closer to the body, she realized that the woman was dead or seriously hurt. She called 911 and waited for the police.
The first officers to arrive on the scene were Ivan McMillan and Daniel Rios, assigned to patrol Eagle Rock by the LAPD Northeast Division. It was 1:30 a.m. and paramedics had been there for about a minute. McMillan secured the scene with the help of other officers and then accompanied a team of detectives to a small cottage with a long driveway on 5127 Vincent Avenue, a street parallel to Loleta and about a quarter mile away. The officers observed a red substance that resembled blood pooled lengthwise along the flatbed of a Toyota Tundra truck parked in the driveway of the house.
This was Del Torro's residence, and the LAPD officers knocked on it, initially evoking no response. Mcillian unsuccessfully tried to kick open the door, and when eventually Del Torro opened it he was taken into custody. The officers secured the premises and waited for a search warrant.
For the next eight hours or so, a string of detectives and criminalists visited the crime scene to investigate and collect evidence. The victim was identified as Jennifer Flores, and additional evidence revealed that blood and DNA matching hers was found on the porch of Del Toro's residence as well as in the driveway. Latex gloves, two leather gloves and a piece of rope were recovered from the kitchen sink in the house, as were several items of bloodstained clothing, including a T-shirt in a plastic bag. What's more, a 1989 red Acura Legend (license plate 3JMP967) registered in the name of Jennifer Flores and containing her birth certificate, a resume and a County of Los Angeles form, were found parked in the driveway. Although Del Toro was advised by an LAPD homicide division detective of his right to remain silent, the fire captain participated in a lengthy, coherent interview that was tape-recorded.
Jasmine Uramis, a neighbor who lived directly across the street from 5127 Vincent Ave. and who was 14 years old at the time, told police that she heard what she thought were a man and woman arguing before she went to bed around 12:30 a.m. About 15 minutes after the argument, said Uramis, she heard the sound of screeching tires that appeared to come from the front yard of her residence.
In testimony given to the Grand Jury by a forensic pathologist at the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, the immediate cause of Flores's death was strangulation, and injuries to the head caused by "blunt force" was a contributing factor. The pathologist, Louis Pena, identified three bruises under the left side of Flores's neck as well as abrasions to the neck. There were also bruises to the forehead, eye area, chin and nose.
Del Toro, who is now 54 years old, retired from the LAFD after his arrest. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges of torture and first-degree murder of Flores, who appears to be an acquaintance of his, possibly someone he met through a mutual friend. The fire captain was initially placed under house arrest. He has been in jail since November 2006, following a Grand Jury indictment for torture, based on testimony by witnesses. Among the witnesses was Monica Gibo, a former girlfriend of Del Torro who had been dating him since they met at the Fire Department Credit Union in March 2001. Gibo told the Grand Jury that Del Toro often got drunk and indulged in physically abusive behavior.
During a Sept. 8, 2001 dinner date, for example, according to Gibo, Del Toro got drunk and when the two started arguing, the fire captain is alleged to have waved a clothes hanger and repeatedly asked Gibo, "Do I need to bitch-slap you?" Later, after hitting her with the hanger and while they were lying in bed, according to Gibo, Del Toro put his hands around her neck and said: "You know how easy it would be to snap your pretty neck?"
Around Christmas that same year, Gibo said in her testimony, she had another argument with Del Torro when she arrived at his house to return the Christmas gifts he had given her. At one point in their argument, according to Gibo, he grabbed her by the collar of her sweatshirt and she felt as if she was being "bounced off the walls in the doorway." She says she then fell to the ground, whereupon Del Toro grabbed her by the leg and dragged her down the hallway to the front door and insisted that Gibo apologize to him because she made him "do things like this to [her]." Gibo said that Del Toro's roommate, Ralph Aragon, who also testified before the Grand Jury and witnessed part of the altercation, told Del Toro to "sleep it off."
On Feb. 25, 2002, while Del Toro was cooking dinner, he poked Gibo in the stomach with a knife and "kept telling me how easy it would be to kill me," Gibo said in testimony to the Grand Jury, adding that Del Toro then laughed. The next day, while she was at Del Toro's house for dinner, the fire captain boasted that "nobody is going to do anything to him because he is Captain David Del Toro," Gibo said in her testimony. That evening, Del Toro pushed and shoved Gibo, waving his fists at her and calling her "weak." When she turned to walk away, Del Toro kicked her in the lower back and "kept saying, 'you're weak, you're stupid—I don't want someone weak and stupid in my life,'" Gibo said in her testimony. When Del Toro tried to get closer to her, said Gibo, she ducked into an alleyway and called 911. In her view, Gibo told the Grand Jury, Del Toro seemed to derive pleasure from such incidents, each one of which was preceded by his drinking alcohol.
Gibo's testimony prompted disclosures by the LAFD that Del Toro had attended 52 domestic violence-counseling sessions in 2003-2004 as well as 43 Alcoholics Anonymous classes. However, in an Oct. 1, 2008 ruling, Judge Ito disallowed Grand Jury testimony from Del Toro's ex-wife, Melissa Dale, who alleged a number of alcohol-related incidents in which Del Toro punched, struck or shoved her, causing her minor injuries, including a 1997 incident that resulted in her filing for divorce and terminating their relationship.
The incidents "shed little if any light upon the defendant's criminal intent or motive in August of 2006," said Ito, agreeing with Joseph Gutierrez, the defendant in the case. Ito said he was concerned that such evidence would be viewed as an attempt at "painting the defendant as a mean drunk who takes delight in bullying and beating defenseless women."
In March 2007, prosecutors told the court they would not seek the death penalty in the case (the Grand Jury indictment for torture, coupled with the murder charge, made Del Toro eligible for the death penalty). "Based upon the criteria our special circumstance committee looks at—background, age, et cetera, et cetera—quite frankly he did not fit into that category of people we'd seek the death penalty for," Deputy D.A. Grace told NBC during the fire captain's March 3, 2007 arraignment in court. The murder charge that Del Toro faces carries a term of 25 years to life in state prison. Defense lawyer Gutierrez declined to make any comments about the case to Eagle Rock Patch until the jury reaches a verdict.
Amid all the attention that this case of savage murder and mysterious delays has received in the media, particularly in some blog forums, there's one key question around which the unfolding trial is expected to revolve: Why would anyone guilty of a crime such as this, let alone an LAFD captain at the peak of his career, dump the victim's body so close to his home?
"That's going to be the defense's argument—that he was too drunk to know what he was doing," says prosecutor Grace of Del Toro and his alleged victim, who was evidently an acquaintance. "But the evidence that he drove with her body in a pick-up truck, dumped her and then tried to clean up the evidence shows that he was in his senses."
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