LAFD Murder Trial: 'How Do I Get Out of Here, Man?'

Five days after the jury heard a snippet from an audiotape in which former LAFD Capt. David Del Toro said he had “f-----g killed” a 42-year-old woman he barely knew, the defense today played other portions of the two-hour audiotape recorded by LAPD detectives after Del Toro was arrested in 2006.

In a roughly hour-long audio segment, Del Toro, 54, sounded surprisingly coherent and able to recall events related to the murder of Jennifer Flores, an acquaintance of his whose battered and mostly nude body was found on Aug. 16, 2006 about two blocks from his Eagle Rock home on Vincent Avenue.

Del Toro, who is charged with murdering Flores, was heard saying in the audiotape that he first met Flores about six years previously (2000). In all, he had met her four or five times, he said, and the last time he saw her was at his house on the night she was evidently killed on Aug. 15, 2006.

They had been partying and having a few drinks, said Del Toro, when at around 8 p.m., roughly an hour after Flores had an argument with him over some matter, a man named Nick or Rick showed up at his house.

Del Toro said he opened the front door and saw a Latino male about 5-feet-7-inches or 5-feet-8-inches tall, in his 30s and wearing a dark T-shirt. “This guy was a vagabond, I’m telling you,” Del Toro remarked in the audiotaped interview, which was conducted by Al Aldaz, a detective with the LAPD’s robbery homicide division, who took Del Toro into custody on Aug. 16, 2006, after observing blood and other evidence outside his Eagle Rock residence.

At about 10 p.m., Del Toro said, he went to bed after checking on some money that he had left on his dresser, while Flores stayed in the second bedroom of his house. Asked by Aldaz if he had been drinking and whether he was drunk now, Del Toro replied “S--t, ya” and went on to say that he slept right away and that all he could remember thereafter was the sound of Flores yelling loudly.

“I said, ‘what the f--k, you know—and I went back to sleep again,” said Del Toro, sounding lucid, composed and cooperative throughout the audiotape played in court. “I remember looking for my money—I’m getting ripped off …  She’s going to burn me.”

A minute or two later in the audiotape, parts of which had been redacted for the jury, Detective Aldaz is joined by his partner, veteran LAPD Detective Brian Carr, who investigated the notorious and still unsolved 1947 "Black Dahlia" murder of Elizabeth Smart. Aldaz is heard telling Del Toro in a matter-of-fact, friendly tone of voice: “The most shocking thing I could probably tell you is that a person who we believe to be Jennifer was found dead a couple of blocks from your house.”

The interview continues:

• Del Toro: “F--k!”

• Detective Aldaz: “I know you were drunk—I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. But a person believed to be Jennifer was found dead a couple of blocks from your house. We have evidence that brings her right back smack to your house. If you were drunk enough and don’t remember, this is the time to come clean. Let’s not get yourself in trouble because, to be honest with you, it doesn’t look good. If you were drunk and did something stupid. … All three of us are the same age—he’s been drinking before, I’ve been drunk before, we can sit down and talk about it.”

• Del Toro: “From the get go, the first time I met her … how come you [Flores] knocked on my door … but I’m not going to kill her, man.”

• Detective Aldaz: “Any man or woman over the age of 14-15 is capable of doing something stupid. Don’t think you’re exempt or we’re exempt. I think that’s what happened here.”

• Del Toro: “Rick—she went out and talked to him. I said, ‘not another loser, man.’”

• Detective Aldaz: “Let’s not get Rick or Nick into this. There’s 100 percent evidence that this happened in your house. Someone from your house took her to where the body was found—and she was not alive when she got there.”

• Del Toro: “They brought her back to my house?”

• Detective Aldaz: “No.”

• Del Toro: “I don’t know.”

• Detective Aldaz: “This ‘I don’t know’ is not going to look good in court.”

• Del Toro: “I want to see an attorney. I told you what I had to tell you.”

• Detective Aldaz: “I think she did something to upset you. From talking to you, I don’t think you’re a bad guy. I don’t see you as a violent guy, but I do see all of us making mistakes. You made a mistake last night—and that’s what I want to hear you say.”

• Del Toro: “F--k, I don’t know what else to tell you. Didn’t touch that woman—didn’t do anything to her.”

• Detective Aldaz: “The reason we’re 100 percent sure is that whoever dumped [Jennifer’s] body used your truck. There’s no one else who would have dumped the body and driven your truck back. Were you so drunk that you don’t remember driving your truck back?”

• Del Toro: “Well, I’m cooking my goose out here. I want an attorney. Oh, f--k, I didn’t have sex with that woman.”

• Detective Aldaz: “We’re not accusing you of having sex with her. We’re accusing you of killing her.”

At one point in the audio recording, when the detectives have left the interrogation room, Del Toro can be heard saying to himself: “How do I get out of here, man?—I don’t know.” During several moments in the courtroom today, Del Toro appeared somber and thoughtful in what is likely to be this trial’s final week.

Del Toro is expected to take the witness stand, possibly in the next couple of days, and any testimony he gives would clearly be the highlight of this long-delayed trial.

A Grand Jury charged him with first-degree murder in November 2006 and he faces 25 years to life if found guilty of that crime by the current jury. He faces 15 years to life if found guilty of second-degree murder and a maximum of 11 years if found guilty of manslaughter—which the defense has been trying to prove by trying to draw attention to his alcoholic history and the psychological and physical distress he evidently suffered as a firefighter.

The audiotape was played during a cross-examination that resumed today of Gordon Plotkin, a psychiatrist who testified in court on Thursday, Feb. 17, and who told the jury that he believed Del Toro had suffered an alcohol-induced blackout—or loss of memory—around the time Flores’ murdered body was found.

Asked by defense attorney Joseph Gutierrez if he still stood by that opinion, Plotkin replied that he did and that his opinion was consistent with “the explanation of the detectives” heard interviewing Del Toro in the audiotape.

Del Toro, added Plotkin, didn’t recall everything that happened on that fateful night and “he had to be extremely intoxicated at that time.” LAPD breathalyzer tests on Del Toro hours after Flores’ body was found revealed a blood alcohol level of 0.12—four decimal points more than the legal limit for driving. (Flores’ blood alcohol level was between 0.29 percent and 0.37 percent.)

Asked by Gutierrez what effect sleep deprivation might have had on Del Toro, who evidently worked several 24-hour shifts in a row during the two weeks before Flores was killed, Plotkin replied that lack of sleep would have been “the gasoline on the fire—by itself it can cause lapses in memory and can make extreme intoxication all the more profound.”

Would people suffering from blackouts be “inclined to do something against their normal nature?” a juror asked Plotkin in a written “clarification” note read out by Superior Court Judge Lance Ito.

Generally, answered Plotkin, the issue is “connected to their personality and [is] not necessarily a Jekyll and Hyde” question—“you don’t become a different person, but your inhibitions go away when you’re drinking.” (Del Toro’s former girlfriend, Monica Gibo, told the jury Feb. 10 that he allegedly beat her and threatened her after drinking alcohol.)

Plotkin’s opinion was backed up by testimony today by Scott Fraser, an eyewitness memory and identification expert who is a faculty associate at the USC Medical School’s Institute of Psychiatry, Law, and Human Behavior. “Even with as little as two or three days of sleep, people show marked decreases in their ability to reason and make decisions,” he told the jury, noting, however, that “people respond in very different ways” to sleep deprivation.

Asked by Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace whether alcohol causes people to commit violent acts, Fraser replied: “Categorically, no, but does [alcohol] lead to [violence], yes.”

Pressed further to answer whether an intoxicated person makes a “choice” to be violent, Fraser said that it would be incorrect to categorize as “decision-making” any behavior resulting from a lack of inhibition linked to alcohol.

“Was it a conscious decision or was it because of decreased inhibition, that is a philosophical question,” Fraser said. “You can’t answer it scientifically.”