Rewards go to two in Trailside Killer case

Two crucial witnesses received $17,500 rewards Tuesday for helping police catch a man later convicted and sentenced to death in a lunchtime slaying on a Concord walking trail.

Shawn Steelman, 39, and Bryan Gomez, 29, both of Concord, were instrumental in the case against Robert Frazier, convicted in June in the May 13, 2003, slaying of Kathleen Aiello-Loreck, said Concord police Lt. Brian Wiesendanger.

"We could not have done it without either of these people," Wiesendanger said. The two witnesses helped police link Frazier to the crime scene with DNA from a cigarette butt, among other things.

Steelman, who then was a transient and camped some 90 feet from what would become the crime scene, went to the police station when he heard they wanted to interview him. Steelman, it turned out, had talked with Frazier two hours before Aiello-Loreck's death.

"He seemed like he was all there, apparently he wasn't," Steelman recalled.

"The thing that stuck out most in my mind, he bummed a cigarette from me," before he left his camp to go buy more, Steelman recalled. "And he goes, 'how long you going to be gone, maybe I'll see you when you get back, I'll be hanging out here a couple of hours,' " Steelman recalled.

Steelman also told police Frazier had offered to help him get work at a telemarketing firm, and police confirmed Frazier's identity through the firm, Wiesendanger said.

Gomez told police he was riding his bike on the trail when he had a conversation with a man who turned out to be Frazier. Gomez showed investigators the location of a cigarette butt that he had seen Frazier smoking, which contained Frazier's DNA. Police matched the DNA to Frazier after he was arrested on unrelated charges in Indiana.

Gomez also picked Frazier out of a photo lineup and testified against him, Wiesendanger said.

The Antioch mother of three was walking along the Contra Costa Canal Trail when she was attacked, sexually assaulted and fatally bludgeoned. Frazier was convicted of first-degree murder, rape and sodomy.

Her company, then a division of BEI Systron Donner, offered a $25,000 reward, and the Concord City Council passed a resolution offering a $10,000 reward, both for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a suspect or suspects, Wiesendanger said.

Aiello-Loreck will never be forgotten by her co-workers.

"I think that she's always on people's minds," said Paul Quezada, a human resources manager at Aiello-Loreck's company who also grew up with her and helped present the rewards on Tuesday. The company dedicated a conference room to her, with her photo, and erected a plaque to memorialize her in a company picnic area. "I attended most of the trial," Quezada said. So it was tough. But you know, justice was done."