Manteca Hispanic guilty of rape, murder
STOCKTON -- A jury has convicted a Manteca man of rape and murder in the slaying of an 18-year-old Manteca High School student who was killed during a party in a Home Depot under construction. As a San Joaquin County judge dismissed the jury Tuesday, Ty Lopes, 35, denied the accusations.
Modesto Rape, Murder Suspect Learns Fate Jurors convicted Ty Lopes (pictured) for first-degree murder and rape with special circumstances in the death of 18-year-old Latina Renee Ramos. - (NNN-Norcal)

• Northern California: Lopes guilty in rape/murder
  The jury Tuesday found Ty Lopes guilty of the murder and rape of 18-year-old Renee Michelle Ramos, whose body was found at a construction site in Manteca. Burrows testified he saw Lopes and Ramos' boyfriend, 19-year-old Jacob Silva, rape and strangle Ramos to death with her bra.

• Hispanic pleads innocent to kidnap-rape of 16 year-old girl
  A man suspected of kidnapping a 16-year-old Mojave girl at knifepoint and sexually assaulting her last year pleaded innocent during his arraignment. Jorge Ishmeal Medina, 30, entered his plea on assault with intent to commit rape and two other related charges stemming from the June 26, 2001 attack. Medina, who was hired to paint the girl's Cerro Gordo Street home, is suspected of entering the residence while the girl's family slept. He told deputies he was tired of hiding out in abandoned houses in Los Angeles. - (NNN-spanic-sexcrimes)

• Hispanic re-arrested for sexually molesting little girls
  Pablo Guerra Vera was arraigned Thursday afternoon on felony molestation charges after sheriff's department officials re-arrested him this week. His bail was set at $500,000.
  Brinton said the charges involve three females including a 26-year-old adult, an 8-year-old girl and a 5-year-old girl. Vera was originally taken into custody in January on molestation, sodomy, rape and penetration charges after sheriff's detectives received information of ongoing molestation and rape - (NNN-Norcal) - (NNN-spanic-sexcrimes)
  
  
• Hispanic little girl molester suspect Sanchez arrested
• Hispanic Pubic School Worker Faces Molestation Charges
  A former Sacramento school worker is accused of molesting a 7-year-old girl over a period of more than two years. The suspect, Manuel Sanchez Jr., 32, was a yard supervisor at Bowling Green Elementary School, but investigators said it was a day-care center run by Sanchez's girlfriend where the alleged molestation occurred. - (NNN-Norcal) - (NNN-spanic-sexcrimes)

• Hispanic Priest arrested for rape of 16-year-old (girl) in church residence
  Catholic cleric also is accused of trying to dissuade a witness.
  HANFORD -- A Catholic priest has been arrested and booked on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl who served as a part-time employee of his church.
  The girl, who was not identified because of her age and the nature of the charge, told Hanford police that Miguel Flores, a priest at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on the southern edge of Hanford, raped her in his church residence Feb. 16.
• Sixteen-year-old girl accuses Hanford priest Miguel Flores of rape HANFORD, Calif.

• April trial set for molest of 13-year-old by Marquez An April 22 trial date was set Tuesday for a man accused of molesting a 13-year-old girl he met on a telephone chat line. Johnnie Paul Marquez III, 23, faces eight counts of child molestation stemming from the January incident in which the girl allegedly stayed in Marquez's room in his parents' home for several days.

• Monterey Police Warn Women Of Potential Hispanic Rapist
  Two Women Said Suspect Was Pretending To Rent An Apartment
  Monterey police are warning women to watch out for a potential rapist.
  Two women have come forward, saying a man in his mid-20s tried to break his way into their homes, pretending he wanted to rent an apartment at their complex.
  Both women describe the man as Hispanic, standing 5-feet-7 with a medium build.
  All women, not just those showing rentals, are being asked to be on guard.
  (Copyright 2002 by TheKSBWChannel.com. All rights reserved.)

• Homo Hispanic Priest to enter plea on warrant
  A former Stanislaus County priest accused of having sex with a teen-age boy will be arraigned in Connecticut on Tuesday. The Rev. Oskar Pelaez, 35, will enter a plea in Hartford Superior Court to a charge of being a fugitive from justice. Hartford officers arrested him Saturday after learning of an outstanding felony warrant from the Turlock Police Department. He has been in custody since then on $500,000 bail, police said. Hartford Sgt. David Kardys said Pelaez should be extradited to California in a few days. Pelaez does not deny the allegations of sexual misconduct.
  Pelaez's relationship with the victim began about four years ago when the boy was 14 1/2.
• Homo Hispanic Priest Faces Sexual Misconduct Charges - (Norcal - Spanic Sexcrimes)

• Fresno: Molest suspect jailed
  Authorities arrested a 36-year-old man Monday on suspicion of molesting two girls in Woodlake. Cesar Lara was booked into the Tulare County Jail on three counts of performing lewd acts with the girls, ages 10 and 12. He is being held in lieu of $150,000 bail.

• Border Patrol agent accused of molesting immigrant's daughter
  EL CENTRO, Calif. (AP) - A veteran Border Patrol agent has been charged with repeatedly molesting the daughter of a former illegal immigrant from Mexico. Agent Joseph Socorro Olvera, 45, was charged with six felony counts of lewd acts upon the girl, who is now 11. Olvera began a relationship with the girl's mother in 1993, when she was an illegal immigrant and he came to her El Centro home claiming she failed to show up for a court appearance, Owen said. The molestation began when the girl was in the second grade and continued at least until March
  [Reader comments] "This must be the 30th agent in 18 months to be busted of MEXICAN or LATRINO CULT-URE. I mean INS, BORDER PATROL, CUSTOMS. Busted for selling Women, drugs, taken bribes, selling fully auto weapons.. I must remember that diversity is good for U.S. Yet any one who points this out is hateful for pointing out what happens as we give up our power and share it with this hateful ATZLANDERS or however it's spelled.. Our leaders have sold U.S. out...In ten years N.C. went from 80,000 beaners to over 480,000 in the 2000 census!"

• Spanic pervert soccer coach Garcia sentenced
  PLEASANTON -- A Tri-Valley youth soccer coach pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of indecent exposure and was sentenced to a three-year suspended prison term and five years probation. Leroy Garcia, 59, was charged with six counts of exposing 'himself' to young girls in Livermore and Dublin.
  A federal grand jury indicted Garcia in March 2000 after authorities said he had downloaded about 50 computer images depicting children having sex. He pleaded guilty that November to two federal charges and was sentenced in April of this year to serve 33 months in a Victorville prison. Garcia, who coached in the California Youth Soccer Association, has a history of sex-related offenses dating to 1963. At least three convictions on indecent exposure charges were set aside in 1976 after he petitioned the court under California law. Garcia, who also coached for Dublin High and Pleasanton schools, must serve at least two years and three months of his federal sentence before he is eligible for parole. - (reader link & headline)

• Mexican California: Seven patients sue Mexican physician, alleging sexual assault
  A Kaiser Permanente gynecologist in Gilroy who was arrested in May for allegedly sexually assaulting several women during exams was named in a civil suit filed Friday by seven former patients. The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleges that Raul Ixtlahuac of Salinas fondled and penetrated the patients, some of whom were pregnant, during pelvic exams.

• Latino-Hispanic man wanted for rape of 7-year-old girl in San Jose, CA (local TV)
  7-year-old assaulted in S.J. The Gardner Academy second-grader was walking alone to school Thursday when she encountered a man beneath a nearby bridge who attacked her. Dozens of officers searched the area for the suspect, described as a heavy-set Latino 45 to 50 years old, 5 feet 6 inches, with short black hair and a mustache. He wore a black sweater, a black shirt, and a black bike helmet.
• San Jose Girl Kidnapped, Molested by Hispanic

• Hispanic bus driver 'Jesus' gives no-contest plea in rape of retarded woman
  A van driver charged with raping a developmentally disabled woman pleaded no contest after a Tulare County judge indicated he would sentence the man to no more than six years in state prison.

  Jesus Jose Macias, 26, of Farmersville pleaded no contest at a court hearing this week and will be sentenced June 20. He was charged with rape of an incompetent person. The no-contest plea spares the 35-year-old victim, who has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old, from testifying in court.

  Macias was a van driver for Tina's Transportation, a company that transports developmentally disabled passengers. He was driving about 10 people home from the Creative Center in Visalia in a 15-passenger van on the afternoon of Dec. 22.

  Usually, he dropped the victim off first. But that day, he took the other passengers home and then drove her to a field north of Visalia and stopped the van. In the front seat of the van, he forced the woman to her knees, pulled down her pants and raped her.
  

• Hispanic gang member tells of Latina killed and burned for refusing sex
  Gary Guerrero Jr. allegedly killed 17-year-old Marlene Bueno because she spurned his sexual advances. Afterward, Guerrero tried to ``eradicate her, as though she had never existed as a person'' by setting her body ablaze...witness Martinez fled to the home of relatives in Texas and then Mexico.

• Hispanic Miguel Hernandez Herrera arrested in attempted kidnapping
  A former Gilroy man with a record for child molestation was arrested Friday in connection with an attempted kidnapping the day before of a 7-year-old girl at her home in San Jose.

  Working from a partial fingerprint found on the screen of the victim's bedroom, police identified their suspect as Miguel Hernandez Herrera and took him into custody early Friday at his home on Topaz Avenue in West San Jose, several miles from the girl's home.

  A registered sex offender with arrests involving entering women's bedrooms, the 27-year-old suspect was known to stay at several addresses, including one within a mile of the victim's Lantern Court home in South San Jose. Surveillance was conducted at each before the arrest was made, police Sgt. Steve Dixon said.

  According to authorities, the girl was in bed Thursday morning when a stranger appeared outside her window and motioned for her to come to him. When she ran, he forced his way inside and chased her into a hallway, where the victim knocked on her mother's bedroom door.

  When the man saw the mother, he fled.

  Dixon said Herrera, who was booked on charges of burglary and attempted kidnapping, may face other charges as the investigation unfolds.

Court records indicate Herrera was involved in another case similar to Thursday's. In 1996, according to a felony complaint, he entered the bedroom of a 16-year-old Gilroy girl, whose family he knew, during the night. Herrera beckoned her to come with him but she refused.

The victim, although not physically harmed, was frightened and reportedly could not sleep alone for several months afterward. At the time, Herrera was on probation for assaulting a woman in her bedroom in the middle of the night.

Herrera pleaded no contest to the 1996 charge of annoying and molesting a child younger than 18 and was given a year in jail and three years probation. He later was sent to state prison for two years for failure to comply with conditions of his probation.

Records also show arrests for burglary and possession of stolen property.

Hispanic child-rapist and murdered dies in jail
Drugs caused Soria's death: Medication may have been hoarded

An overdose of drugs, not heart problems, killed Thomas Robert Soria Sr., a suspected child kidnapper and sexual predator who was found dead in his jail cell two days after the start of his death-penalty murder trial in Gardnerville, Nev., authorities announced Friday. No note was found in a search of his cell, but Pierini said the circumstances are "characteristic of a suicide."

Soria, who turned 40 the day before his death, was on trial for the March 19 kidnapping, murder and sexual assault of Krystal Steadman, a 9-year-old South Lake Tahoe girl whose body was discarded off Highway 50 near Carson City.

Just one day of the trial had been completed, but Soria had heard opening statements that described him as a sex-obsessed monster filled with "thoughts of murder, thoughts of hurting children."

And one day before that, his own son told the court, outside the presence of the jury, that his father abused him sexually for as long as he could remember and had enlisted his aid in the killing of the little girl.

The son, Thomas Robert Soria Jr., 20, pleaded guilty to her murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

When Soria Sr. was found dead in a medical isolation unit of the jail the morning of Jan. 28, there was no evidence of trauma and no obvious reason for his death.

Evidence gathered for Soria's trial included a file found on the hard drive of his computer that documented Soria's "appetite for the sexual assault of children and adults" and "his intention to rape ... torture and kill" his "ideal female: a young, white, petite blonde."

• Gilroy: Police arrest Rodriguez, suspect in attempted rape, kidnap
  A Gilroy man was arrested Sunday and charged with attempted rape, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and robbery. Gabino Rodriguez, 31, was booked into jail after a woman identified him as her attacker. The 39-year-old woman managed to escape after the 6 a.m. assault, police said. The woman said she was accosted during her daily walk along Murray Avenue near Leavesley Road. She told police she was ordered into the man's vehicle at knife point and driven to one location and then to another. At both locations the suspect initiated a sexual assault but backed off when the victim used the ruse of telling him she knew someone who lived nearby, police said. When the victim bolted from the pickup truck, the suspect tried to run her down, police said. She ran home and called police.

Mexican National Sentenced to Six Years For Rape SANTA ROSA (BCN) A Mexican National received a six-year prison term today for raping a woman after she got off a bus in Santa Rosa in June. Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Robert Boyd sentenced Asuncion G. Guzman to the mid term for the offense. He could have received eight years in jail. Guzman pleaded no contest to forcible rape. A kidnapping charge and two sexual assault charges were dropped. The 18-year-old victim told police she met Guzman and a friend at a homeless shelter on June 12. She said they spent the day at Guzman's house drinking beer and he followed her onto a bus when she left to visit her boyfriend. She told police she got off the bus when Guzman removed her back pack from a seat and sat next to her. That prompted her to get off the bus, but Guzman followed her and raped her in some bushes behind a strip mall on Stony Point Road, she said. Guzman's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jeffrey Mitchell, said his client was intoxicated at the time and turned himself in to police when a sketch of him as the suspect appeared in the newspaper. Deputy District Attorney Chuck Arden said Guzman only contacted police because threats had been made against him by people who recognized him from the sketch. He said Guzman told police several different accounts of the incident and believed the woman, visiting from Texas, was a prostitute with whom he could do as he pleased. JamesLanaras1257p12/6/00

Former Pittsburg Official Valenzuela Sentenced For Molesting Boy MARTINEZ (BCN) Former Pittsburg assistant city manager Glenn Valenzuela was sentenced in Martinez today to a jail term and five years of heavily structured probation for molesting one boy and giving alcohol to two others.

Johnnie Paul Marquez III has admitted to one count of a lewd and lascivious act with a child younger than age 14 and a count of detaining or concealing a child from a legal custodian. Marquez was arrested Aug. 14 after an extensive search by Fresno police and the FBI for the 13-year-old and her 9-year-old sister. Marquez was first charged with two counts of child stealing in relation to both girls and three counts of molestation pertaining to conduct with the 13-year-old. With the plea deal, Marquez admitted to a lewd and lascivious act with the 13-year-old and to child stealing in regard to the 9-year-old. Alcorn testified that after Marquez was arrested he told investigators that after conversing with the 13-year-old on a telephone chat line, they arranged to meet and eventually engaged in sexual activity.

David Busio Lopez sent to prison for the third time for torturing his ex-girlfriend
Boyfriend gets third sentence November 25, 2000
By CLARK MASON THE PRESS DEMOCRAT SANTA ROSA After twice being sent back for re-sentencing because of errors by a judge, a Santa Rosa man has been sent to prison for the third time for torturing his ex-girlfriend. The 1st District Court of Appeal twice overturned sentences meted out by former Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Bryan Jamar in the case of David Busio Lopez, 27. He was convicted in 1994 in a particularly brutal domestic violence case involving his girlfriend.
Witnesses at the 1994 trial testified that Lopez, a black belt in kick-boxing who kept a 9 mm handgun on a tray next to his bed, kept his girlfriend a virtual prisoner, beating her with an electrical cord, threatening her with different weapons and even holding a knife on their baby.
"He beat her like a dog," Ravitch said.

 * Mrs. Soto Convicted Of Murdering husband as he slept and dismembering him
   Updated 5:42 PM ET December 23, 1999
  (VENTURA) -- An abused spouse who shot her husband and dismembered him is found
  guilty of first degree murder. It took a Ventura county jury less than three days of
  deliberations to conclude that Gladis Soto planned and carried out the killing of her
  husband, Pedro Alba, as he slept. Her attorneys had hoped for a manslaughter conviction.
  She faces a possible sentence of 50 years to life, with more time added for assault with a
  deadly weapon, and for ramming the car of her husband's lover.