Sierra LaMar: Guilty verdict in 2012 kidnapping and killing of 15-year-old Morgan Hill girl.
Guilty verdict in kidnapping and killing of Sierra LaMar
A family overwhelmed by years of torment found some peace Tuesday when a Santa Clara County jury convicted Antolin Garcia-Torres in the 2012 kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Morgan Hill resident Sierra LaMar.
The verdict ended a difficult and dark chapter in the high-profile capital murder case that has stunned the small South Bay community. In the half decade since her disappearance, Sierra’s family, friends and scores of onetime strangers have turned out by the hundreds in weekly searches for the vibrant and social teen, whose body was never recovered.
Sierra’s family erupted in gasps of relief when the court announced the jury’s decision just after 9 a.m. in a packed San Jose courtroom. Garcia-Torres,
“It gives us peace as a family knowing that this won’t happen to another child and that you can’t get away with something like this.” Marlene LaMar, mother
wearing a light-blue collared shirt and tie, showed almost no reaction to the verdict as he stood alongside his attorneys.
The 26-year-old was found guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping of Sierra, along with three additional counts of attempted kidnapping stemming from three separate 2009 carjacking incidents at Safeway stores in Morgan Hill.
Deliberating for less than 15 hours, the jury reached its decision late Monday, following the end of closing arguments Thursday.
The case will move on to the sentencing phase of the trial, scheduled to begin Tuesday, during which the same jury will decide whether GarciaTorres will get the death penalty.
Shortly after Tuesday’s verdict was announced, Sierra’s mother, Marlene LaMar, expressed relief that justice was served, but said the jury’s decision does not ease “the pain and the sorrow that we experience every day.”
“Truly, we’ve been praying for the chapter to have this type of ending — justice,” Marlene LaMar said. “We’re grateful for the jury for coming to the right decision. It gives us peace as a family knowing that this won’t happen to another child and that you can’t get away with something like this.”
Sierra’s father, Steve, added, “This is a long time coming. It’s bittersweet. We don’t have Sierra — that’s the bitter part.”
Sierra’s sister, Danielle LaMar, said the verdict will begin to help the family move on.
“We’ll obviously never get Sierra back. It’s not closure, but it’s a good first step,” she said.
Attorneys for Garcia-Torres declined to comment. The convicted killer’s mother, escorted by sheriff ’s deputies, walked out of the Santa Clara Hall of Justice in tears before being whisked away in a black sedan.
Sierra, a Sobrato High School student who moved to Morgan Hill from Fremont with her mother, vanished on her way to catch a school bus on March 16, 2012. When she failed to show up to school that day, her parents and friends began a frantic search for the teen.
But what started as a missing-person case grew increasing foreboding, when the next day, police tracked Sierra’s cell phone to a field less than a mile from her home.
The search grew bleaker when Sierra’s purse, school books and clothing were discovered near a shed in another nearby field two days after her disappearance.
Prosecutors said mud on the abandoned clothes, which included Sierra’s underwear, suggested she had been dragged on the ground.
DNA on her jeans matched that of Garcia-Torres, a onetime grocery clerk who lived in a trailer park 7 miles from Sierra’s home with his then-pregnant wife and daughter.
Prosecutors said he had never met Sierra before she disappeared, making him the overwhelming focus of the Santa Clara County Sheriff ’s Office’s investigation.
Sheriff ’s deputies used a dog to follow Sierra’s scent, but the trail went cold 150 yards from her house on Paquita Espana Court.
Hoping to find the body, authorities placed a GPS tracking device on Garcia-Torres’ Volkswagen Jetta, but they ultimately gave up, and arrested him five days after Sierra went missing.
For more than three years, hundreds of community volunteers, bonded together through the tragedy, joined in weekly search efforts around Morgan Hill for any trace of Sierra.
Sierra’s childhood friend Tatianna Isom, now 19, was too young to participate in the searches. Instead, she and her mother blanketed the South Bay with missing-person flyers and held fundraisers to help find Sierra over the past five years.
Isom was relieved by the verdict, but still wants to know what happened to her friend.
“Until I know for sure, I always hope we’ll get some type of answers,” she said outside the courthouse.
Despite not having a body or a crime scene, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office moved forward with charges — a gamble that could have been costly if Garcia-Torres had been acquitted and new evidence were discovered later.
Using the defendant’s own words, security video and physical evidence, Deputy District Attorney David Boyd laid out the case against GarciaTorres over the more than three-month trial.
Perhaps the most damning evidence was the DNA. Along with finding Garcia-Torres’ genetic material on Sierra’s abandoned clothing, detectives discovered her DNA in his car, and on the outside of a pair of gloves in the vehicle. Crime lab technicians later discovered her hair on a rope that was in his trunk.
Garcia-Torres’ attorney, Alfonso Lopez, fought to weaken Boyd’s case by raising doubt about the evidence throughout the trial.
The centerpiece of the defense focused on the prosecution’s assertion that Sierra is dead. Lopez argued that with no body, there’s no proof a crime even occurred. He said it was possible Sierra is a runaway and simply stopped communicating with her family.
As Lopez worked to cast doubt on individual elements of the prosecution’s case, he never presented an encompassing narrative that explained the heap of incriminating evidence against his client.