A jury recommended
yesterday that a former Chula Vista bus driver be executed for the
abduction and murder of 9-year-old Laura Arroyo 14 years ago.
The decision brought the wrenching drama of the pony-tailed
third-grader's slaying a step nearer to closing. The jury's
recommendation will be weighed by San Diego Superior Court Judge
John Thompson, who will formally impose the sentence at a hearing
Dec. 14.
While the judge can reject the
recommendation and opt to sentence Manuel Bracamontes to life in
prison without parole, such a step is rarely taken in death penalty
cases.
As the verdict was read, the 42-year-old defendant did not react.
But several of his relatives seated in the second row of the
courtroom began to cry.
Across a narrow aisle separating two sides of the spectator
seats, Arroyo's parents and about 10 other relatives looked on
grimly. Outside of court, Laura's father, Luis, said he was
grateful.
"Justice has been made today," Arroyo said. "He has to pay for
all the damage he did to my little girl."
Jurors left the courthouse and declined to comment. The panel
convicted Bracamontes on Sept. 2 of kidnapping, molesting and
murdering Laura with a pickax.
She was abducted from her San Ysidro home during evening bath
time June 19, 1991. She was found the next morning on the sidewalk
of a Chula Vista business park by two women on their way to work.
An autopsy showed she was choked, stabbed 10 times in the chest
and once in the face and had a half-dozen chopping wounds about her
face and one of her ears.
She had also been molested, the key to eventually breaking open
the case more than a decade later.
Bracamontes, a former neighbor of the Arroyos' who had once lived
in the same apartment complex, was linked to the slaying in October
2003. DNA from semen that was captured on swabs taken from Laura's
body was matched to Bracamontes' DNA.
At the time of the killing, police said there was no evidence she
had been molested. But more sophisticated DNA technology allowed a
San Diego Police Department criminalist to find the genetic material
when he re-examined the evidence in 2003, prosecutors said.
Defense attorneys at the trial tried to discredit that evidence,
suggesting it could have been planted or tampered with. They asked
that Bracamontes's life be spared for the sake of his family and put
on witnesses who testified he was a hard-working and gentle person
incapable of such a vicious crime.
Police had suspected Bracamontes when investigating the slaying
and had plucked hair samples from him as part of the investigation.
Witnesses placed him in the complex around the time Laura
disappeared.
After coming inside from playing with friends, Laura heard the
doorbell ring. She ran to answer it, chirping, "Who is it? Who is
it?" About 10 minutes later her parents realized she was gone.
The front door was open. Her shoes were still neatly placed
inside the threshold.
At the time, seasoned detectives were stunned at the brutality of
the crime. Laura, a third-grade student at Nicoloff Elementary
School, was stabbed with such force that the sidewalk beneath her
body was chipped.
As weeks went by without an arrest, a curious phenomena took
shape at a blank billboard on Broadway in Chula Vista. For several
weeks that summer, at night, passers-by said that they could discern
Laura's image across the white expanse of the billboard.
Some said it was no more than the play of light and shadow.
Others – eventually numbering in the thousands who crowded the
street in what became a nationally known event – believed it was the
spirit of the girl, a spectral plea in the night sky to find her
killer.
Yesterday, Luis Arroyo thanked police and prosecutors who worked
the case. He said it was still hard to wake up each day without his
daughter, but he felt a small measure of relief now.
"I knew sooner or later," he said, "that he would have to pay."
Greg Moran: (619) 542-4586; greg.moran@uniontrib.com
