Witness in Murder Trial of LAFD Captain Gives Testimony Damaging to Defense

A witness for the defense whose testimony raises the possibility that there might be a second suspect in the murder case of People vs. David Del Toro betrayed serious lapses of memory in court Friday—and another witness, a practicing pathologist, cast doubt on the autopsy report by suggesting that “blunt-force trauma” was a more likely cause of the strangulation of the victim, Jennifer Flores, an acquaintance of former LAFD Captain Del Toro whose mangled body was found two blocks from his Eagle Rock home in 2006.

Andres Carranza, a middle-aged San Diego-based actor and TV producer who lived in Silver Lake at the time Flores was murdered, told the jury that he saw a white male named Nick arguing heatedly with Flores a few months before she was killed—but Carranza admitted he couldn’t recall whether he mentioned the man to LAPD detective Al Aldaz during an interview with him on Sept. 12, 2006. (Aldaz took Del Toro into custody, took his statements and conducted a two-hour audiotaped interview in which, according to evidence admitted in court yesterday, Del Toro soliloquized while he was left alone in the interrogation room that he "f-----g killed her [Flores].")

In fact Carranza, who said Flores lived in his Silver Lake apartment for eight to nine weeks in the spring of 2006, also admitted that the first time he ever heard of Nick was through a private investigator, Dana Orent, hired by the defense.

"Isn't it true that you never even knew that name [Nick] and that name was fed to you by Dana Orent?" Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace asked Carranza during an intense and fast-paced cross examination, prompting him to reply, "Yes, that's true," and then adding shortly thereafter: "I'm a little nervous up here [in the witness seat]." Further, Carranza admitted that the first time the name "Nick" ever came up was when Orent mentioned it to him—and that he knew the private investigator was working for Del Toro's defense attorney Joseph Gutierrez.

Carranza’s inability to remember key events related to the possibility of a mysterious suspect in Flores’ murder appeared to destroy the defense’s effort to show that someone other than Del Toro allegedly killed the 42-year-old woman. During a Grand Jury hearing in November 2006, Gutierrez said that hours before Flores was found murdered, Del Toro and Flores were together at his house on 5127 Vincent Ave. and that the firefighter was in a “twilight zone because of sleep deprivation and alcohol.” At around that time, said Gutierrez, Flores left with a stranger who showed up at the door and gave his name as Nick or Rick.

Del Toro, 54, has been charged with strangling Flores to death and is being tried for first-degree murder, based on a large body of incriminating evidence that investigators found on the crime scene as well as in his home. He has pleaded not guilty and faces 25 years to life in state prison if found guilty.

In what was arguably the most glaring blunder in his testimony, Carranza told the jury in response to a question by prosecutor Grace that Orent interviewed him about a week after Flores’ body was found on Aug. 16, 2006. But given that Orent was hired by defense attorney Gutierrez, it would have been impossible for the private detective to interview Carranza a week after Flores’ murder because, as prosecutor Grace put it to Carranza somewhat mockingly: “Did you know Gutierrez wasn’t even assigned to the case at the time?”

Carranza also fumbled badly when asked when Flores left his Silver Lake apartment. After saying that it was in “late May or June—I’m almost sure it was mid-June,” he said he thought it was around St. Patrick’s Day. When Grace pointed out that the Irish holiday is in March, Carranza conceded that “I guess it is” and then went on to say that years of working in the film industry, with its multiple, often-chaotic schedules, made it difficult for him to keep track of events. (Early in his testimony, Carranza said he was interviewed by LAPD detectives “at least half a dozen times,” but he repeatedly said later that he was interviewed by the detectives “at least three times.”)

In response to questions from the defense, Carranza described Flores as “emotionally unstable”—an assertion also made in testimony yesterday by Flores' psychiatrist at the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, William Vicary, who said she suffered from symptoms of anxiety and depression and had low self esteem. Carranza said Flores would “drink a lot” and was “intoxicated probably 90 percent of the time.” He also said that she frequently got “confrontational and physical with me—she assaulted me” even though he claimed he was never had a romantic relationship with her. He said he first met Flores at the home of a Silver Lake screenwriter and that upon her request, he allowed her to move into his apartment five days later. It was the only time in his life, he said, that he had ever done such a thing.

An autopsy of Flores by Louis Pena, a forensic pathologist at the L.A. coroner’s office who testified before the jury this past Tuesday and Wednesday, revealed that she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.38—more than four times the level at which a person is legally drunk. Pena told the court that Flores was strangled to death, possibly with something soft such as a T-shirt, shirt or a tie, and that “blunt force” wounds to her head were a contributing factor in her murder.

In testimony today by another forensic pathologist, Paul Herrmann, who works in the coroner’s office in Oakland, CA, the jury learned that although head injuries were probably an important cause in Flores’ death, “alcohol would have an equal ability to be included in the cause of [her] death”—a factor that isn’t part of Pena’s report. On Tuesday, Pena told the jury that the bleeding on Flores' back, neck and jaw area "overrides any possibility that she died of alcohol poisoning.”

Herrmann, who was called by the defense to testify, also contradicted Pena's opinion by saying that a blunt-force object, such as a broom, was more likely to have strangulated Flores because the wounds found on her neck did not have the symmetrical, uniform markings associated with strangulation by soft ligatures. Instead, the markings on Flores’ neck were linear gashes limited to the area around her Adam’s apple. (In his testimony last Wednesday, Pena categorically said that while neck injuries caused by blows can be life-threatening, they cannot result in strangulation, and that if the injuries on Flores' neck were indeed caused by a blunt-force object, he would have seen evidence of a bone above her Adam’s apple, called the hyoid, shattered at many points. )

To evidently back up his assertion that Flores was probably not strangulated with a soft ligature such as a towel or a rope, Herrmann said that it’s “unusual for strangulation not to include petechia”—a facial hemorrhaging that occurs, especially around the eyes, when the jugular vein is throttled, preventing blood from leaving the brain (while the heart continues to pump blood to the head). Pena’s report found no signs of petechia.

A juror, however, appeared to provide a possible answer to the absence of petechia by asking Herrmann whether the hemorrhaging would be present if Flores were killed in such a way that the strangulation pressure centered on her left jugular, around an area where she suffered a bone fracture and where the gashes to her neck lay. The pathologist replied that given such a scenario, the juror's assumption would be correct.

The trial will resume Tuesday and Del Toro is likely to take the witness stand sometime next week.