N.Y. man sentenced for 1975 murder in San Diego

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com

A former Navy man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 1975 death of a San Diego serviceman was sentenced Tuesday to five years to life in state prison, although a decades-old change in the law means his sentence will be reduced to a total of six years.

Dennis Lepage, 64, was sentenced in San Diego Superior Court for strangling 28-year-old Alvaro Marquez Espeleta at the victim's home on Reynard Way in the city's Middletown neighborhood, just south of Mission Hills and Hillcrest.

Espeleta's nude body was found in the bedroom of his home Dec. 31, 1975 by co-workers who checked on the naval dental technician after he failed to show up for work at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

Lepage was also in the Navy and stationed in San Diego at the time of Espeleta's killing, according to preliminary hearing testimony. Lepage was 18 years old at the time of the slaying.

Lepage received a five-to-life term in accordance with sentencing laws in 1975. However, the state's Board of Parole Hearings will re-compute his sentence to a six-year term to reflect sentencing laws from 1976, prosecutors said.

Authorities connected Lepage to the killing through fingerprints and a palm print discovered on the victim's body, and additional fingerprints found in the victim's bathroom and on a beer bottle inside his home.

Lepage's fingerprints were on file because of a 2010 restraining order violation arrest in Massachusetts, according to testimony from the preliminary hearing.

In 2019, investigators matched his fingerprints to those from the 1975 crime scene.

Once investigators had Lepage's name, they went looking for DNA in discarded trash outside his home, the prosecutor said. That turned up a match to evidence found in DNA collected at the 1975 crime scene.

Lepage was arrested in January 2020 in Troy, N.Y., just outside the state capitol of Albany.