Teen’s note under scrutiny
Prosecutors, defense clash over legitimacy of ‘I hate my life’ message in girl’s notebook
SAN JOSE — Prosecutors Wednesday confronted one of the most disputed pieces of evidence in the capital murder trial of the man accused of killing missing Morgan Hill teen Sierra LaMar: a handwritten line in her notebook suggesting she ran away.
The message, scrawled in the girl’s Spanish notebook, was found about a week after her March 16, 2012, disappearance, and said: “I hate my life no ever sees this I will be in San Francisco by 3/16/12.”
To lawyers for Antolin Garcia-Torres, 25, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of killing LaMar and attempting to kidnap three other women, the inscription bolsters their assertion that there’s no proof in the “no body” case that the teen cheerleader is even dead.
Prosecutors say the message in the notebook was an ill-considered prank by school kids, and on Wednesday presented testimony from an expert who said it didn’t match her handwriting.
The expert, John Bourke, an analyst in the Santa Clara
County District Attorney’s Office crime lab, testified that many letters in the note are “significantly” different from other samples of Sierra’s writing, and said it “probably” was not written by her.
During his cross-examination, Garcia-Torres’ lead lawyer, Al Lopez, suggested it was not ideal to compare the note with writing samples just from Sierra’s homework. He also repeatedly asked Bourke if it was true that handwriting can change depending on a person’s state of mind, a question Bourke said he wasn’t qualified to answer.
Bourke acknowledged that he cannot entirely eliminate Sierra as the author, but he added that such eliminations are rare and occur only if the actual author is known.
Sobrato High School Assistant Principal Kevin Miller turned the notebook over to a deputy sheriff on March 22, 2012, about a week after Sierra disappeared, according to his court testimony. He couldn’t recall which student
gave it to him or say who might have written in it.
Sierra’s Spanish teacher, Claudia Magana, testified that the students’ notebooks were not secured in a way that would prevent other kids from picking them up and writing in them. She also agreed under questioning by the prosecution that students were aware of Sierra’s disappearance and that some spoke of it in a joking way, suggesting the possibility that one could have written the message as a prank.
Sierra had moved from Fremont to a rural neighborhood north of Morgan Hill in mid-October of her sophomore year. In testimony earlier this month, her friends said that while she wasn’t thrilled about the move, she wasn’t extremely unhappy.
The friends testified that Sierra had no plans to run away, and no means because she had no driver’s license, passport, bank account or credit cards. Prosecutor David Boyd argued that even though her body has not been found, “she had no reason to abandon everything she knew, loved and cared about.”
At least one friend also testified that Sierra was planning on taking Ecstasy the night she disappeared, and had done so before, a fact the defense has suggested shows Sierra had a secret life that belied her image as a clean-cut cheerleader.
On Wednesday, the prosecution also put Morgan Hill resident Joanna Moore on the stand to try to tie Garcia-Torres to the shed off Laguna Avenue where Sierra’s discarded clothing and purse were found two days after she went missing.
Moore said that she had been going to the shed to feed feral cats around the same period of time and noticed other people also were feeding them. A bag of dry cat food was found in the trunk of Garcia-Torres’ car, which prosecutors suggested he used to feed such cats, though not necessarily at the same spot.
However, Moore surprised even the prosecution by testifying that other spots in the rural community where cat lovers feed feral cats included Paquita Espana Court, where Sierra lived with her mother.