Details about Samantha Runnion's killer (long)
Messalina
of detail about this Avila guy. In particular, Samantha lived in the
same building as the little girls he was acquitted of molesting. His
sister says he told her "I could do anything I wanted to those girls
now, because of double jeopardy."
Dumbass.
Suspect's life full of discord
Avila's sister says he's not capable of girl's murder, but still she
has questions.
Family photo: Alex Avila and his sister Elvira sit within miles of the
spot where Samantha's body would be found in July.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By KEITH SHARON
The Orange County Register
It was a strange afternoon for Alex Avila to go "nowhere."
Monday, July 15, he had a load of chores to accomplish. His sister,
Elvira, asked him to fill a couple of 5-gallon water bottles - he was
the only one who could carry them back up the stairs. He told his
mother he would make her a barbecue chicken dinner.
Also, to get their apartment ready for an inspection on Tuesday, he
had to unscrew his speakers from the wall and move the large
entertainment unit that held his stereo, television and family
pictures - the one of his parents arm-in-arm, his brothers and
sisters, and the panoramic shot of him and Elvira on a rocky ledge off
Ortega Highway overlooking Lake Elsinore.
Elvira, 22, stopped him on his way out the door.
"Where are you going?" she said.
"Nowhere," he said.
She handed him money for the water, and sometime around 4 p.m., police
say, Alex Avila walked out of the apartment and became every parent's
nightmare. They say Avila sexually assaulted, killed and gruesomely
discarded Samantha Runnion, a 5-year-old Stanton girl with wavy hair
and a smile that pierced the collective heart of a national television
audience.
Samantha's body was found near a rocky ledge off Ortega Highway -
within miles of the spot where Avila and Elvira posed for the picture
that now sits in their living room.
Four days after he left the apartment, police arrested Avila, a man
whose life has been filled with torment and disturbing behavior. He
witnessed his father kill his next-door neighbor. His brother was
murdered by a member of his own gang. He spent time in foster care.
He was accused - and later acquitted - of molesting two 9-year-old
girls, one of whom lived in the same condominium complex as Samantha.
His work history includes low-wage jobs where some co-workers
complained he made crude comments. Once, court records say, he was
fired for stealing and set a fire to retaliate.
The week Samantha disappeared, Elvira said, was filled with movements
her brother didn't adequately explain, and a scratch on the inside of
his left knee that didn't make sense. Thinking back, she wonders why
he was driving around or checking into a hotel when he was supposed to
be home helping her.
Avila declined several requests to be interviewed.
He is scheduled to appear in court Monday for a preliminary hearing.
Elvira says she doesn't know who killed Samantha. She said the brother
she knows is not capable of such brutality. But she has been thinking
recently of something Avila said about one of the girls who accused
him in 2000.
"I can do anything I want to that little girl, and I can't be charged
for it because of double jeopardy," Elvira recalls her brother saying.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The killer acted quickly. He stopped his car on the narrow road lined
with garages at the Smoketree, a Stanton housing complex crawling with
kids. He approached two little girls who were playing on a low
cinderblock wall. This was the blind spot, an alley where the kids
weren't supposed to play. There were no parking spaces nearby. No
windows. No adults. The nearest walkway leading to the center of the
complex was around the corner and down the block. There was nowhere to
run.
The killer said he lost his dog. When Samantha reached out her hand to
ask about the height of the dog, the killer grabbed her. He stuffed
her into the car. She screamed to her friend to go tell her
grandmother.
In an instant, Samantha was gone.
It was 6:45 p.m., almost three hours after Avila left home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within 15 minutes, Orange County Sheriff's Deputies were on the scene.
They sent word to the Mexico and Arizona borders. They began checking
databases for registered sex offenders. The only witness, 6-year-old
Sarah Ahn, provided information. She described a Latino with black
hair and a moustache. His car was green.
Then there were the guesses.
The suspect's actions placed him in a criminal category: Preferential
Seductive Pedophile, according to profilers. Preferential because he
apparently selected a victim because of her age. Seductive because he
tried to lure her with a story.
Profilers say preferential seductive pedophiles are meek. They choose
child victims because they are intimidated by adults. They may have a
wife or girlfriend, but usually just as a cover for their criminal
behavior. Pat Brown, a former private investigator who founded the
Sexual Homicide Exchange, a clearinghouse of information about sex
crimes, said preferential seductive pedophiles come from a background
of hypocrisy. They have played by the rules, but they have not been
rewarded. They come from dysfunctional families.
They win the confidence of adults, getting them closer to children.
They are coaches, teachers, baby-sitters, youth leaders. They have a
history of molestations in which they are the victim or the abuser.
Brown said 25 percent of these kinds of pedophiles are "increasers."
They advance from pornography to fondling, to rape, to rape with
foreign objects, to murder.
Paul Delhauer, an investigative analyst for the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department, said rage can give a meek pedophile a new
classification: killer.
"The statistic we don't want to tell anyone is there is a 50 percent
chance the child will be dead within the first hour," Delhauer said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where was the water? Where was Avila? Elvira needed the water to
dilute the juice so her 2-year-old son wouldn't get diarrhea. The
entertainment unit had to be moved before the inspector came Tuesday.
Elvira lives in government housing, and anything blocking a window is
considered a fire danger.
Avila had lived with her, off-and-on, for more than a year, switching
occasionally to his mother's apartment across the Lakeview apartment
complex. Elvira and Avila are very close. They were raised together
and took their first communion together. Once, when Elvira was
challenged by girls on the block, Avila came running to help her.
She has recent pictures of Avila kissing her son. Another photo shows
Avila playing Nerf basketball in the dining room with their friends.
She said she has never seen Avila lose his temper.
Sometime early Monday evening, Elvira called Avila on his cell phone.
He said he had the water, but that he was in Corona, about 40 miles
from Lake Elsinore. He told her he was "bored" and "I went for a
drive," she recalled.
He told her how to remove the speakers. He did not say he was coming
home.
Annoyed that he left the heavy lifting and electrical work to her,
Elvira tried to keep the colored wires from getting jumbled as she
unscrewed the speakers from the wall. She said it took her three hours
to inch the hulking, wooden entertainment unit across the floor.
It was his stuff, but he wasn't there.
Adelina, Avila's mother, called Elvira sometime after 8 p.m. and asked
how the dinner was coming.
It's not coming, Elvira explained. Avila wasn't home.
So Adelina called him.
He said he was inside Ontario Mills Mall and would spend the night at
the beach in Dana Point. Adelina said she heard airplanes, which
seemed odd if he was in the mall.
This wasn't like Avila.
Ever since he was 16, Avila had taken care of the lifting and the
fixing. He was the man of the house.
Rafael, his father, was an alcoholic, Elvira said. The kind of guy
who, if he didn't like the dinner that Avila's mother cooked, would
throw his plate at her. Elvira said Rafael once beat Rafael Jr. with a
hot cooking ladle. When a teacher reported his bruises, the six Avila
children were taken from their parents. They spent a short time in
foster care.
Elvira doesn't remember Avila ever being beaten or abused. The only
time she remembers him getting into trouble was when he was playing
"Shark," pretending to attack his sisters. He was sent to his room for
jumping on the bed.
Avila's parents met in Mexico when Rafael was a cook and Adelina a
waitress. They moved to Bell Gardens, where they lived in a
two-bedroom house that Rafael converted to four by erecting walls down
the middle of both bedrooms. Rafael operated a catering truck called
"Mi Adelita" that he drove to Echo Park for the lunch rush. When the
Avilas' son Juan began getting into trouble with the law, Adelina
insisted the family move from the urban setting.
On the day they moved into Lake Elsinore in 1989, Rafael Sr. landed a
job as the butcher at Sammy's Meat Market.
The Avilas had a good first year in Lake Elsinore, Elvira said. But it
wasn't long before they were having problems again. The Avilas feuded
with their next-door neighbors, the Whitneys. It got so bad that
Adelina carried a tape recorder in hopes of catching Ken Whitney
making a threatening comment. Elvira said her father and Whitney had
challenged each other to fights.
The Avilas called the police several times, Elvira said, but nothing
ever happened. The feud escalated when Juan threw a huge rock through
the window of the Whitneys' truck.
On Feb. 8, 1992, Elvira remembers her father taking a shower as if he
were getting ready for work. After he got dressed, he told his
children to go into their rooms and shut the doors. They peeked out
their bedroom windows as their father got in his car, pulled in front
of the neighbor's driveway and shot Whitney three times. Whitney was
dead at the scene.
Avila, who was 16, was shocked by what his father had done, Elvira
said.
He "ran up and down the hallway yelling, 'I can't believe he did
that.'"
Rafael pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to
16 years in prison. He has since been deported to Mexico. He could not
be reached for comment.
His children lived with the stigma.
"People followed my family around, calling us murderers," Elvira said.
"They said, 'You're going to hell.'"
After the shooting, Avila was put in a program for at-risk students at
Elsinore High School. His teachers were a husband-and-wife team,
Philip and Ellen Micheli, and he took English, math, history,
computers and social responsibility. They remember him fondly. In a
class full of discipline problems, Avila was laid-back, a loner.
"I remember him daydreaming at his computer," Philip Micheli said. "I
would say, 'Come on, Avila, get to work."
Ellen, who was closer to Avila, said he was "wimpy." Avila was quiet,
almost effeminate, she said.
She remembers he didn't want to wear his glasses. She would catch him
squinting at the blackboard and remind him to put them on.
The daughter of the man Avila's father had killed was assigned to the
class, too.
One day, the girl complained to Ellen that Avila was "making comments"
to her and giving her dirty looks.
The teachers never saw Avila do it. Ellen didn't believe he would do
something like that. At the end of the year, Avila gave the Michelis a
vase he made in ceramics class.
They still have it.
TUESDAY, July 16
Sometime after midnight, Alex Avila checked into the Embassy Suites
Hotel in Temecula. Elvira said investigators told her they have his
room receipt.
All night, Avila's movements didn't match what he had said he was
going to do. He didn't bring back the water, he didn't make the
dinner, he didn't help her move, and Temecula isn't Dana Point.
From Temecula, Elvira said, Avila called his off-again, on-again
girlfriend Ruby Hernandez, with whom he had broken up about a week
earlier.
Hernandez declined to be interviewed for this story.
Avila told Elvira he and Hernandez had been in an argument about five
days before Samantha disappeared. He said, "I'm leaving." Hernandez
said, "This time, for good."
Sometime after midnight, Elvira said, Avila called Hernandez and asked
her to meet him to get something to eat. She said no.
Avila worked with Hernandez at Guidant Corp., a medical-supply
manufacturer.
He has been accused of sexual harassment at Guidant by another
assembly-line worker, Gwendolyn Green.
Green said Avila made inappropriate comments about her anatomy, made
crude comments about having sex with her and followed her home on one
occasion.
Depositions are being taken in the lawsuit.
Lisa Dalfior, who supervised Avila when he worked a few years ago as a
security guard for VF Factory Outlet, a clothing store in Lake
Elsinore, said he was almost anti-social and a bit antagonistic.
He did not seem to have any friends or a social life outside work. He
spoke mostly of spending time with his mother, mentioning he was
taking her here or there.
"He didn't seem like he ever had any friends," she said.
Dalfior said that after shoppers asked him questions, he would make
disparaging remarks about them when they walked away, calling them
"stupid" in an animated voice, the way a child would name-call.
"It was like he was a kid stuck in an adult's body," Dalfior said.
"You could tell he was off, odd. He just didn't think like other
people."
She said Avila was extremely cocky, frequently making comments of a
sexual nature about women who would come into the store. He would say
things like "I'm going to get with her."
Dalfior said Avila also made sexual remarks to her, which she would
shoot down and walk away.
She said he would blame others for things resulting from his own
behavior.
"He didn't fit in, and it was always someone else's fault," she said.
"He didn't get along with anyone."
Dalfior said Avila walked off the job when a woman was promoted over
him.
In court testimony during his molestation case, a witness said that
when Avila worked as a security guard at Wal-Mart, he was fired for
stealing. He returned to the store and set fire to a rear exit door,
the witness said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elvira was asleep when her phone rang.
Avila needed her to open the front gate of their apartment complex.
It was 3:19 a.m. Tuesday, July 16, she said.
He went straight to his bedroom, stayed for what seemed like one
minute, and walked out of the apartment again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was 6:30 a.m. when Erin Runnion appeared on television talking
about Samantha.
Erin, who studied Latin American culture in college, said Samantha was
"mi cielito lindo" (my pretty sky) and "tigrita" (little tiger).
She wanted the kidnapper to feel empathy.
She would later find out that her daughter was already dead.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avila came home again at 9 a.m.
He carried the water bottles up the stairs.
Elvira was waiting.
"Where have you been?" she said.
"In Japan," he said with a laugh.
"Did you get me anything?" she said.
"No," he said.
She sensed he didn't want to say where he was, so she didn't press
him.
Then Avila did something that shocked her: He cleaned his room.
"That is not normal," she said.
She watched him take several garbage bags from his room to the
Dumpster outside.
He washed all the dishes by hand, which Elvira thought was strange
because she has a dishwasher.
Then he left again.
He got a haircut.
Tuesday afternoon, she noticed the scratch. It was a couple of inches
long, on the inside of his left knee.
"It was pink," she said, "like a cat scratch."
When she asked him about it, he said he scraped his knee stepping over
the baby gate that stretched across the entry to her kitchen.
Elvira looked at the plastic gate. It didn't have any rough edges. It
was flimsy.
She didn't press him about where he was, but she pressed him about the
gate.
He demonstrated how he did it. He stepped over the gate, and his right
knee, not his left, hit the gate.
So he did it again. The right knee, not the left, hit the gate.
Later, Elvira talked to her mother and told her that Avila couldn't
have cut his knee on the plastic gate in her kitchen.
Adelina said Avila told her he scratched his knee on the wooden gate
in the hallway.
"It didn't make sense," Elvira said. "Somebody's lying."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 3:17 p.m. on July 16, Samantha Runnion's body was discovered among
the rocks off Killen Trail about three miles from Ortega Highway.
It is an eerie, desolate spot that is marked by pink streamers that
signal the direction of the wind so hang-gliders can gauge when to
jump off the cliff.
She was nude and posed, police said, in a way that indicated the
killer was leaving a "calling card."
Suddenly, the investigation changed.
The killer had made no effort to conceal the body, and the spot, not
far from the road, suggested that he wanted her to be found.
Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona looked into television cameras and
talked directly to the killer, "Don't eat, don't sleep, because we're
coming after you."
Suddenly, police were looking for a different profile, a sexual sadist
who seemed to be taunting authorities.
"He was mocking society," said profiler Pat Brown. "That's his
statement to the world – Look what I did to your little treasure."
Brown said though it may be popular in movies, posing a body to leave
behind a "calling card" is very rare.
Brown said the killer who poses a body has put a tremendous amount of
thought into showing up authorities. He has likely been the focus of
an investigation in the past and police couldn't stop him, she said.
WEDNESDAY, July 17
Adelina and Avila watched television accounts of the search for
Samantha's killer - the night Avila finally made the barbecue chicken
dinner that he had promised Monday.
Carona was on television giving the audience tips on how to recognize
the killer. He said to look for someone who had changed his appearance
or had unexplained scratches on his body.
Adelina would later tell "Good Morning America" that she told Avila
the killer should be tied up and burned.
Avila favored the electric chair.
Adelina said no, the electric chair was too quick and didn't involve
enough pain.
What Avila didn't know was that by Wednesday he was under
surveillance.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department got about 2,000 tips.
Some of the tips came from people who knew about Avila's past,
including the family of the two 9-year-old girls who had accused him.
One of their mothers told the media she thought Avila hadn't gone to
Stanton to grab Samantha.
"I think he went there to get my baby," she said. "But instead he took
this little girl."
On Dec. 22, 1999, the cousins told their parents that they had been
molested when Avila baby-sat for them.
Avila had taken care of the girls while he was dating one of their
mothers.
The girls said he had molested them while their mothers – who are
sisters – were working. The girls never alleged intercourse, but one
of them said he rubbed his penis between her legs and inserted plastic
tubes into her. Prosecutors alleged that the plastic tubes were the
same kind manufactured by Guidant, where Avila worked.
He was tried and acquitted by a jury that Erin Runnion later blamed
for the death of her daughter. The prosecutor presented no firm dates
of the alleged molestations, no DNA evidence, no corroborating
witnesses, and two at times giggly girls who took the witness stand.
The jury wasn't allowed to know that Avila failed a lie-detector test.
Avila told police that the girls had misunderstood. He said he was
merely being affectionate, playful and fatherly. He told police that
he helped one take a bath and put suntan lotion on her body, and while
doing this he touched her vagina 12 times in the bathroom and six
times in the living room. One of the mothers also accused Avila of
threatening to kill her. The jury didn't believe that charge, either.
Elvira, who was in the apartment several times when Avila baby-sat,
believes he was innocent of the molestation charges.
"I never saw anything happen with Alex (and the girls)," Elvira said.
"They were always happy with Alex."
The mother of one of the girls wept when the verdict was announced.
Then the judge warned Avila.
Judge Robert G. Spitzer told him, "You want to avoid situations in the
future which could result in the making of such accusations. Your life
would be totally destroyed were you convicted of an offense like this.
So you should be grateful to your defense team for the work that they
put in, and change your lifestyle to avoid these kind of accusations
in the future."
THURSDAY, July 18
Just before 6 a.m., Adelina told her son she was scared because a car
had been cruising around the Lakeview apartments. She asked him to
check it out.
He and a neighbor followed the car as it headed out of the complex.
Then it turned on them.
It was undercover Orange County sheriff's deputies.
They had been watching him.
Avila was detained Thursday morning. He was taken to a Santa Ana
hotel, where he was questioned for several hours. Photos were taken of
the scratch on his knee.
He called his mother and told her he was innocent.
FRIDAY, July 19
Alex Avila was officially arrested at 9:55 a.m., ending a weeklong
manhunt that drove Orange County Sheriff Carona nearly to tears. In a
television interview hours after the arrest, Carona said he was "100
percent certain" Avila was the right man.
His voice cracked when he addressed Avila directly, "What you didn't
realize when this investigation took place, Samantha became our little
girl. When I told you, Mr. Avila, that we would be relentless, when I
told you that if you sleep or stop to eat, we won't Tonight you know
we were deadly serious."
Elvira Avila has talked to her brother on the phone a few times since
his arrest.
She doesn't think he is capable of the rage and depravity it would
take to commit such a crime.
Elvira said she knows one thing for sure about the monster who killed
Samantha Runnion.
"I don't usually believe in hell, but they are going to hell," she
said. "This person is sick."
tinydancer
"Messalina" <sec...@duelingoak.com> wrote in message
news:7111e10e.03121...@posting.google.com...
> This is a very interesting article from the OC Register. It has tons
> of detail about this Avila guy. In particular, Samantha lived in the
> same building as the little girls he was acquitted of molesting. His
> sister says he told her "I could do anything I wanted to those girls
> now, because of double jeopardy."
Too bad the jury didn't believe those two little girls, or know he flunked a
lie detector test. What was this jury thinking anyway, he admitted to
touching the childs vagina '12' times.
td
> statement to the world - Look what I did to your little treasure."
> The girls said he had molested them while their mothers - who are
> sisters - were working. The girls never alleged intercourse, but one
Messalina
> "Messalina" <sec...@duelingoak.com> wrote in message
> news:7111e10e.03121...@posting.google.com...
> > This is a very interesting article from the OC Register. It has tons
> > of detail about this Avila guy. In particular, Samantha lived in the
> > same building as the little girls he was acquitted of molesting. His
> > sister says he told her "I could do anything I wanted to those girls
> > now, because of double jeopardy."
>
>
> Too bad the jury didn't believe those two little girls, or know he flunked a
> lie detector test. What was this jury thinking anyway, he admitted to
> touching the childs vagina '12' times.
>
> td
>
in his financial strata.
Mez