Posted on 07/20/2002 5:40:14 AM PDT by randita
Man arrested in Samantha's killing
Alejandro Avila had frequently visited the complex where the Runnion family lived.
July 20, 2002
By BILL RAMS, JEFF COLLINS and ALDRIN BROWN The Orange County Register
STANTON – A desperate search for the sexual predator who killed Samantha Runnion ended Friday with the arrest of a man acquitted last year of molesting a former friend of hers.
Alejandro Avila, 27, was picked up near his mother's apartment in Lake Elsinore, where he lived, three days after Samantha's nude body was found in a remote area off Ortega (74) Highway.
More than 400 investigators followed thousands of leads in one of the largest manhunts in Orange County history.
The case sparked international attention as parents wondered why a man would kidnap, sexually assault and then asphyxiate a little girl who was planning to celebrate her 6th birthday at Disneyland next Friday.
"I'm 100 percent certain that Mr. Avila is the person who kidnapped and killed Samantha Runnion," Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona said.
Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo said forensic tests - including DNA - convinced investigators that Avila is the killer.
Investigators allege that Avila snatched Samantha from outside her Stanton town home Monday night after approaching her with a story about losing his pet Chihuahua.
At first, authorities believed the killer was a stranger who happened upon the girl. But Avila frequently visited a girl who lived in the same building until six months ago, the girl's mother said Friday.
"I think he went there to get my baby," Elizabeth Ann Veglahn said. "But instead he took this little girl."
Investigators believe he spent several hours with Samantha, sexually assaulting her before finally killing her.
They found her body the next day. Authorities issued a nationwide warning that the killer would strike again, describing the way he posed her body as a "calling card."
During a 4 a.m. phone call to his family Friday, Avila maintained that he is innocent.
But he has no apparent alibi, said his sister, Elvira Avila, 22.
He unexpectedly missed a family dinner Monday night.
He also drives a light-green Ford Thunderbird, the same color as the vehicle described by a witness to the abduction, and looks eerily similar to a police composite drawing.
Avila told his family that investigators found fibers underneath Samantha's fingernails, his sister said. During a search of Avila's residence, investigators took fibers from blankets, clothing and other materials for DNA testing.
He told his mother not to worry about him.
"I didn't do it," his mother quoted him as saying, "and you know God knows I didn't do it, even if I'm accused."
Her mother said she wants to believe her son was at the Ontario Mills mall at the time Samantha was kidnapped, as he has said. But she could hear an airplane flying overhead at the time of his call. Ontario Mills is an indoor mall.
His mother also recalled finding pornographic images on her son's computer screen.
This isn't the first time a member of the Avila family has been accused of murder. His father pleaded guilty to shooting and killing a neighbor in 1992.
The third-oldest of six children, Avila was born in Los Angeles.
He and his family moved to Lake Elsinore in 1989.
"He's just a clown. He's just funny," his sister said. She never saw signs that he is violent.
Over the years, he has worked at several jobs.
He was a security guard at Wal-Mart and most recently worked assembling heart-valve parts for a medical manufacturer in Temecula.
When Veglahn - the mother in the earlier molestation case - met him, he was unemployed and living with his mother. He lived upstairs in the Lake Elsinore apartment complex.
"We were just friends at first," she said.
But later, she said, "he moved in, and we started dating."
She said Avila was especially nice to her three children, particularly her daughter, who was 5 at the time.
Veglahn's relatives said they didn't trust him from the time they met him.
He did weird things, they said, like never exposing his feet and showering in his underwear.
"He looked just like Dracula, widow's peak and everything," said her brother, Ernest Veglahn, 38. "The guy's a freak."
One time, he said, Avila showed up at his sister's apartment with singed hair.
Wal-Mart had just fired him for stealing and, to get even, Avila tried to start a fire, he said. Avila doused the emergency exit with gasoline and ignited it, he said.
Wal-Mart didn't return calls seeking to verify the story.
Ernest Veglahn recalled another time watching Avila drop his preteen nephews into bushes from a second-story balcony.
"He had no fear. He would do anything," he said. "I told my sister to ditch the loser."
But his sister didn't listen. She would leave him alone with her daughter to go to the supermarket or work overtime.
The relationship ended, she said, when Avila got violent.
"Every little thing upset him," she said. "He would throw things at me. Ashtrays. He threw a book at me and knocked my glasses off my face."
She said she reported the assaults to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. She said he also stalked her.
Finally, after a tumultuous three years, Veglahn kicked him out and stopped talking to him.
But Avila didn't stop visiting her daughter.
Her daughter - and two sons - had moved in with their father in the same condo complex where Samantha Runnion lived.
After the breakup, Avila made frequent visits to the complex, she said. That was until December 1999, when her daughter came forward with a secret she said she had been holding for years: Avila had repeatedly molested her and her cousin, Veglahn alleged.
"He threatened to kill her and to kill me if she told," Veglahn said.
She and her ex-husband went to police.
Charges were filed. Her ex-husband, who couldn't be reached Friday, ordered him to stay away.
During the five-day trial, Avila's attorney argued that the girls mistook his playful tickling for sexual abuse.
But prosecutors felt they had a strong case, with compelling testimony from the child victims. They expected the jury to reach a guilty verdict.
Veglahn said she cried when the jury foreman announced the verdict: "Not guilty."
"It was stunning and very disappointing," said Mike Socci, chief deputy district attorney in Riverside. "Our judicial system is such that sometimes people who actually have done an act are actually found not guilty of the crime," he said. "It's a shame."
The judge in the case, Robert G. Spitzer, said child-molestation suspects are among the most difficult to convict.
"My recollection is that there was little corroborating evidence to the children's account," he said. "In my experience, this case was typical of other child-molestation cases."
Veglahn said she heard about Samantha's kidnapping from her ex-husband. Both of them - and their children - knew Samantha, she said.
Her daughter lived in the same condo building as Samantha until about six months ago. She used to play with Samantha, her mother said.
She and her ex-husband immediately thought that Avila was responsible.
They said they called sheriff's investigators, who quickly followed up on the lead.
Carona said it was calls from the public that led them to Avila, but he wouldn't confirm that the key contact was made by Veglahn or her ex-husband, Jim Coker.
Register staff writers John McDonald, Charles Adamson, Monica Valencia, Fermin Leal, Barbara Kingsley and Rachanee Srisavasdi contributed to this report.
I also gave links for the other articles in this paper which I'll repeat here:
RELATED STORIES - How the case unfolded - In memory of Samantha
Got it backwards.
The same ones who help find children lost in the stores.....who mothers advise their children to go to if they become lost?
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