LAFD Captain Denies Committing Murder—But Admits ‘Making a Mess’ of Crime Scene

On his second day in the witness stand today, former LAFD Capt. David Del Toro denied he killed a 42-year-old woman, Jennifer Flores, who had been drinking alcohol with him in his Eagle Rock home in 2006 hours before her mangled and all but nude body was found two blocks away.

But the veteran firefighter admitted that instead of calling police he tried to clean a bloody mess in his living room on the night of the murder—and then failed to mention the clean-up effort to LAPD detectives who interviewed him following his arrest.

“It never occurred to you that as a fireman—a captain—you more than anybody else would know that there’s all this blood in your house and you didn’t call the police?” Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace asked Del Toro during a roughly 90-minute cross-examination that left the veteran firefighter visibly nervous but seldom at a loss of words.

“I was certainly confused,” answered Del Toro, paving the way for Grace’s next question: “So how do you know you didn’t kill her since you were so drunk?”

Del Toro said that he had no way of knowing. “How do I know I’m a genius when I’ve never taken a test,” he countered rhetorically.

Del Toro is charged with murdering Flores on the basis of blood and other evidence found in his house, linking him to the crime. He has said that on the night before Flores’ body was found in the early hours of Aug. 16, 2006, a vagrant showed up unannounced at his house and had a conversation with Flores outside on the porch. After he went to bed in a drunken stupor, Del Toro added, he awoke to find that his truck was missing from his driveway.

LAPD detectives found Flores’ blood both on the bed of Del Toro’s truck as well as in the wheel well. They followed marks from the vehicle’s tires, which left a trail of Flores’ blood and DNA all the way from the spot on Loleta Avenue where her body was found to the firefighter’s Vincent Avenue home.

Grace began his cross-examination by asking Del Toro if he knew why Flores’ blood was on two floor mats in his living room as well as on his running shoes, the bed of his truck and a pillar in his front porch. Del Toro said he had no idea how the blood got there. “Someone put it there,” he said. “It could have been one of the police officers—it wasn’t me.”

But in perhaps the most glaring indication that Del Toro had first-hand knowledge about the blood on his running shoes, he agreed with Grace that he talked about the issue, following his Aug. 16, 2006 arrest, in a monologue while two LAPD detectives who tape-recorded an interview with him left the interrogation room.

The monologue, part of a two-hour audiotape prepared by the LAPD, was played before the jury on Feb. 16. In it, Del Toro is heard saying to himself: “She was murdered in my house, man. F--k—it’s on my shoes.”

In his cross-examination at the Los Angeles Superior Court today, Del Toro explained that he was talking to himself about the blood on his shoes only in hindsight after his arrest. “In retrospect, I was putting two and two together,” he said.

But the rub, Grace pertinently pointed out, was that Del Toro could not have possibly known about his bloodstained running shoes from any other source except himself. That’s because, as Grace put it, “the police never said anything to you about blood or tennis shoes—correct?”

No sooner did Del Toro admit that was true (as the audiotaped interview would easily show) Grace went for the proverbial jugular. “So the only person who would have been in possession of that knowledge would be someone who killed Jennifer Flores or who tried to clean up the evidence?”

Although Del Toro denied that was true, he conceded he never told police about the fact that, as he put it in his own words, “I made a mess trying to clean something up.”

Grace also cast serious doubt on the possibility that Flores—who had spent time alone with Del Toro a total of three times since he first met her along with a roommate of his in 2000—was trying to steal his money. “I remember looking for my money—I’m getting ripped off … She’s going to burn me,” Del Toro was heard saying to himself in a portion of his audiotapted interview with the LAPD detectives that the defense played for the jury on Tuesday. He also told the detectives that when he awoke from an alcohol-induced slumber on the night of Aug. 15, 2006, he checked his dresser, where he had kept some money.

Police investigators recovered a little more than $8,400 from Del Toro’s house, in cash and travelers checks, including cash that was lying in plain sight on a table. After bringing that evidence to Del Toro’s attention during his cross-examination, Grace asked: “Why would you ever go to bed and leave Jennifer Flores alone if you had all that money?”

Del Toro also did not appear to have a reasonable explanation as to why he did not call police when, as he said in his testimony, he noticed that his truck was missing. Further, it did not seem convincing that Del Toro, who was, by his own account, “exhausted” and “certainly drunk,” would get up to notice his missing truck. Far less convincing was the likelihood that whoever might have taken his truck would not just bring it back but hose it down in an apparent attempt to destroy crucial evidence.

“Mr. Del Toro, you’re just making all this up as you go along, aren’t you?” Grace asked the defendant on at least two occasions during his cross-examination. Both times, Del Toro replied flatly that he wasn’t.

“You’re confident—and you’re going to stick with the story that you didn’t kill Jennifer Flores?” Grace asked in his last question for the cross-examination.

Del Toro’s answer: “Yes.”

Closing arguments in the murder trial are expected on Monday.