Long Beach Man to Stand Trial for Norma Lopez Killing

The following was reported by City News Service:

A Long Beach man accused of abducting and killing Moreno Valley teenager Norma Angelica Lopez must stand trial on a first-degree murder charge with a special circumstance allegation that the crime occurred during a kidnapping, a judge ruled Monday.

Jesse Perez Torres, 36, of Long Beach, could face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted in the July 15, 2010, attack on the 17-year- old victim.

The judge set a June 24 post-preliminary hearing arraignment and kept the defendant's no-bail status in place. The defendant is being held at the Robert Presley Jail in Riverside.

Deputy District Attorney Mike Soccio called four witnesses and spent most of the hearing outlining detailed DNA evidence collected in the case.

According to Soccio, Torres became a prime suspect after the defendant's forensic information was registered in the state's Combined DNA Index System - - known as CODIS -- and allegedly came back matching evidence collected at the scene of Norma's abduction.

Torres was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence within months of the teen's murder, and at the time of his arrest, he had been required to provide a DNA sample, Soccio said.

The Lopez case had gone cold for a full year after the teen's death. According to Soccio, investigators followed up on 2,000 leads that went nowhere. The CODIS DNA "hit" registered in September 2011. Torres was arrested the following month.

Soccio called forensic analysts, who testified that the California Department of Justice analyzed DNA recovered from an earring Norma had been wearing the day she was taken.

"The thing was damaged, as if it had pulled or yanked out of her ear, but there was enough DNA evidence to get a sample," the prosecutor said.

He said a profile confirmed the girl  was a "major" donor of DNA, while an unknown male was a "minor" donor of DNA on the item.

Twenty-six men -- out of 2.5 million -- in the CODIS database were identified as potential donors, Soccio said. Through a process of intense evaluation, analysts determined Torres' DNA was the closest match to the male sweat or saliva deposited on the earring, according to testimony.

Soccio said the earring, the teen's purse and a folder were located at the spot where she was snatched after an apparent struggle. The victim was heading across a field on her way to meet her younger sister and friends at a house in the 27300 block of Cottonwood Avenue. She had attended a summer class at Valley View High School that morning.

During the preliminary hearing, Soccio played snippets of surveillance videotape captured from a porch-mounted camera at a house on Quail Creek Drive. The tape showed Norma walking along the roadway, heading toward the field. Less than 30 seconds later, a green Nissan Xterra is seen, going in the same direction. According to sheriff's investigators, Torres owned such a vehicle at the time.

About five minutes after the SUV is first seen on the tape, it comes into view again, going the opposite way, then makes an abrupt u-turn, heading back in the direction Norma is walking. Soccio said there is no way to see who might have been at the wheel, or how many occupants there were in the SUV.

Norma's younger sister reported her missing around noon that day, triggering a massive citywide search that garnered national attention. Five days later, the teen's remains were discovered 2 1/2 miles away, amid a clump of trees in front of a house on sparsely populated Theodore Street.

Investigators testified that the teen was laying face-down and her shirt, bra and shoes were missing, though she was still wearing her underwear and jeans.

Soccio said there were no indications of a sexual assault.

Because Torres lived in close proximity to the high school and the route Norma had been using to walk home that summer, he was among many people sought for routine questioning but could not be located by investigators. He left the area and moved to Long Beach two weeks after the abduction-murder, Soccio said.