12 years later, verdict nears in mysterious Yuma murders
YUMA — The gunshots were the finale, rapid bursts marking the end to a mass murder.
The killer had taken his time at first. He had spent hours suffocating the family one by one, then picking up after himself until the real target arrived.
Only Luis Rios lived to see the paramedics. After briefly escaping the killer’s grasp inside the Yuma home, he fled screaming into his gated backyard, only to be gunned down next to his pool.
The blasts cut into the twilight air on La Mesa Street on June 24, 2005, interrupting Marina Garcia de Quintero’s telenovelas. From her home across the way, the grandmother peeked through her window as a figure emerged from the house, walked calmly to Rios’ Dodge Durango and drove off.
Her description of the man was largely consistent with that of another
witness who would relay his account to police. He was Hispanic, short and “a little bit fat,” she recalled in a recent interview with The Arizona Republic.
The La Mesa Street murders, as they would be known, claimed more lives than any other crime in the border city’s history. Police sifted through thousands of tips in the nine years after the slayings. They circulated a sketch of the best lead they had: a nondescript Hispanic man with short hair.
And so it came as a surprise to Quintero when her granddaughter called her in June 2014 with news of charges. The suspect was a black man, Iris Ruiz told her grandmother. Preston Strong was also 6 feet tall, with a medium build. “I don’t think the man was black — he looked Hispanic,” Quintero told a Republic reporter in February, speaking in Spanish from the La Mesa Street home where she still lives, 12 years after the murders. “He wasn’t black.”
*** Six people died within a span of at least six hours that day on La Mesa Street. Four of them were children.
Before Rios arrived home, the killer suffocated his girlfriend, Adrienne Bedoya Heredia, as well as three of her children: 13-year-old Andreas Crawford, 12-year-old Enrique Bedoya and 9-yearold Inez Newman.
Rios and Heredia’s youngest son, 6-year-old Danny Heredia III, died of gunshot wounds.
The Yuma Police Department had its work cut out. There was no scarcity of tips and no shortage of suspects in Rios’ and Adrienne Heredia’s network.
But as detectives chased each rumor, they were met with a series of contradictions, canceling out what had seemed like promising leads.
The brutality and disregard for the children had the trappings of a cartel hit, but police could find no evidence of illegal activity in Rios’ life.
Rios was going through a bitter divorce, and his soon-to-be ex-wife was tied to a cast of unsavory characters. But as the investigation stretched into months and then years, none could be connected to the murders at the home.
At last, investigators zeroed in on Strong, Rios’ best friend. But more contradictions plagued the investigation, effectively shelving charges for nearly a decade. Strong’s DNA was discovered in Rios’ Durango — the getaway car — but Strong may have borrowed it from time to time. And there were other, unidentified DNA profiles found on the steering wheel.
Strong’s alibi was shaky and unsatisfying. But an ex-girlfriend said she was with him, at their home, at an hour when police are sure the killer was inside the La Mesa Street house.
The gun used in Rios’ and Danny Heredia III’s murders never was found. But according to Rios’ brother, a .38-caliber revolver had gone missing from the liquor store where Rios worked and where Strong was a constant fixture. Ballistics tests indicate the missing gun could have been the one from which the rounds at the home were fired.
And then there’s that eyewitness testimony. Could it be that the neighbors were mistaken?
Police and prosecutors were willing to wager on that scenario. This year, Yuma County prosecutors brought Strong to trial on six counts of first-degree murder, one count of armed robbery and one count of burglary.
The case is now in the hands of the jury, which will continue deliberations Monday. Strong could face the death penalty if convicted.
*** The trial began in early February, with prosecutors spending two months presenting the case and the defense offering only a handful of witnesses over a week.
Key witnesses for both sides faltered, changed stories and secondguessed themselves. Some are jailhouse snitches with questionable motives. The best eyewitness said he lied for more than a decade about what he saw that night. Quintero thought she remembered seeing the suspect, as well as Luis Rios, exit the front of the house that night and walk to the back, although there is no evidence Rios ever made it to the front yard.
Strong is 50 now. He’s graying and slender, with eyes that curve downward at the corners and make a face appear kind. He insists he’s innocent.
Detectives turned to Strong after exhausting other promising leads, said Wayne Boyd, a Yuma police homicide lieutenant who has investigated the murders since the beginning.
In an interview before the trial began, he acknowledged the case’s glaring weaknesses. In his mind, though, he said, they were outweighed by the physical evidence.
“If you take the CompuSketch (composite sketch), as given, it does not look like Preston. So he has that,” Boyd said. “(Defense attorneys) will argue that the DNA and fingerprints are present because Preston knew the victims, and was legally and legitimately where those items were found.”
In the interview, which took place last year, Boyd said there was a possibility that Strong didn’t act alone. The case doesn’t hinge on one smoking gun, he said, but on several pieces of a “puzzle” that pointed to one person.
Prosecutors alleged Strong acted alone. There was enough time between the arrivals of each victim that one man could have bound and slayed them all. By the time he was charged in 2014, police and prosecutors had another factor in their favor: Strong had been convicted of another murder.
*** The killer found his way inside the La Mesa Street house between late morning and early afternoon that Friday, when only Andreas and Enrique were home.
A couple who had been hired to clean the pool said they arrived at the residence around 11:55 a.m. and left about 12:15 p.m. They later told police it was typical for the kids to come outside to chat while they were working.
On that day, though, the boys stayed inside and only spoke to them through the sliding-glass door. The pool cleaners said the boys seemed “nervous.”
Andreas and Enrique died first. They were discovered behind a locked door, lying next to each other in a northeast bedroom. An autopsy later revealed that they had been suffocated.
Rigor mortis had set in for them, but not for the others, by the time police arrived.
Adrienne Heredia was the next to arrive home. Surveillance video at RC Liquor showed Heredia leaving the store about 4:19 p.m., and there is no indication she stopped anywhere in between.
Heredia’s body was discovered in a southeast bedroom, under a pile of blankets. Her pants were partily pulled down, but her underwear didn’t seem to be disturbed. There was a large chunk of her hair inside her mouth, and more hair that was hardened by saliva.
For the previous day, the younger two children, Inez and Danny III, had been cared for by Danny’s father, Danny Heredia II.
Danny Heredia II’s initial plan was to drop off the two at the La Mesa Street home sometime after 2:30 p.m., when Adrienne Heredia was to be back from work. He tried calling her several times that day to choose an exact time, but no one picked up. Nor did anyone answer the door when he brought them back shortly before 5:30 p.m., although her PT Cruiser was parked in the driveway.
After about 10 minutes at the door, Danny Heredia II decided to load the kids back in his car and take them home. Had he left that porch a minute earlier or a minute later, his son and Inez might have escaped their fate.
But in a disastrous coincidence, Danny Heredia II spotted Rios driving home just as Heredia II was about to turn off of La Mesa Street.
He made a U-turn and followed Rios back to the house, children in tow.
Inez’s body was found alone, in the southwest corner bedroom. There appeared to be ligature marks on both of her wrists, but no bindings were found.
Police discovered little Danny in the same bedroom as his mother. He was wearing all red, and his hands were bound to his feet by a curling iron cable and electrical cords. A medical examiner would testify that at the time of the autopsy, Danny III still had a T-shirt tied around his neck, with two white plastic bags hanging from it. The official cause of death, though, was a gunshot wound to the head.
Rios also had been bound. But he managed to free his left foot and make a break for it, running around the pool several feet before a spray of gunfire
“He knew Luis had walked into that house, because he was there.” KAROLYN KACZOROWSKI YUMA COUNTY PROSECUTOR
put an end to his escape.
*** The 911 calls began immediately after the gunshots. It was 8:29 p.m., and neighbors several houses away could hear them.
One neighbor who lived behind the La Mesa Street home walked toward the alley between the houses to investigate while his girlfriend called 911. He jumped up onto the 6-foot wall around the La Mesa Street house and met the eye of a short, heavyset Hispanic man wearing a blue T-shirt and black shorts, the neighbor told investigators in 2005.
He said the man had a slightly smaller frame than that of Luis Rios, who was 5 feet 8 inches tall and close to 250 pounds at the time of his death.
The neighbor asked the man what had happened but only got a blank stare. The man then turned around and walked back into the home through the sliding back door.
But on the stand in late February, the witness said that was all a lie. It was actually Strong he saw that night, he said. The description he gave was actually that of Rios, because he couldn’t stop thinking about the victim’s face, he said.
Defense attorney Ray Hanna asked why, after all these years, the witness would decide now was the time to change his story. He noted that the witness had recently been sentenced to jail for a misdemeanor conviction. Was it possible he was hoping for a deal with prosecutors? The witness denied the suggestion and said he just wanted to do the right thing.
Prosecutors say the motive for the crime was Strong’s greed and jealousy of Rios’ success. They are unsure how successful a robber the killer was, because there was little knowledge about how much money could have been missing.
As the trial continued, prosecutors emphasized two key points: Strong’s disastrous finances were offered up as a motive, and the time spans when Strong’s phone records went dark were presented as an opportunity.
Strong was a prolific cellphone user. He preferred talking to texting and had clocked more than 3,000 phone calls in the two months before the murders. Strong talked on his phone plenty the day of the murders as well. But prosecutors noted that there were gaps in his communications that corresponded with the times the victims were arriving home.
Yuma County prosecutor Karolyn Kaczorowski hammered this point home for the jurors during closing arguments.
She pointed to a 22minute gap in Strong’s phone records, with no calls from 5:32 to 5:54 p.m. Rios had arrived at the house right about 5:30 p.m., Kaczorowski reminded the jurors. Before this, Strong had called Rios repeatedly, reportedly asking to borrow money.
“And then, coincidentally, he stops calling him the second he walks in the door?” Kaczorowski asked, her tone incredulous. “He knew Luis had walked into that house, because he was there.”
Prosecutors took a blow on the stand as well. A witness they said would offer testimony about giving Strong a ride the night of the murders testified that she actually couldn’t remember which day she gave him a ride. She also thought it was during the afternoon.
The testimony offered by Adriana Ozuna Guzman, Strong’s then-girlfriend, was probably the best day for Strong’s defense. But even she second-guessed herself under pressure from prosecutors.
On the stand, Ozuna said that on the night of the murders, she came back to the house after work and left for a casino around 6 or 7 p.m. At some point during this time, she said, Strong came home and took a shower. She said Strong was still there when she left.
When pressed, Ozuna said it was possible that she was mistaken on the dates but denied that she had been pressured to change her story.
While prosecutors highlighted the physical evidence tied to Strong, defense attorneys countered by listing the places where Strong’s DNA wasn’t found.
“He was specifically excluded from 37 items of evidentiary value,” defense attorney Ray Hanna said during closing arguments, recalling the DNA expert’s testimony.
A presence looms over the La Mesa Street trial, likely known to everyone in the courtroom aside from the jury. His name was Dr. Satinder Gill, and he was a Yuma cardiologist who was bludgeoned and strangled in his home on Nov. 1, 2007. Preston Strong was convicted of his murder. He is serving a life sentence for it in the Arizona Department of Corrections.
As with the La Mesa Street case, Strong said he was innocent of this crime, too. And like the La Mesa Street case, little but circumstantial evidence points to Strong.
Strong’s defense attorney in the Gill case, Kristi Riggins, spoke with The Republic about her former client last year.
Riggins is a retired public defender who would take on an average of 150 cases per year. She called Strong’s conviction the “greatest miscarriage of justice” in her career.
*** I had never heard of Dr. Gill, La Mesa Street or Preston Strong before Strong pitched me his own story. He reached me on my office land line early last year, with his cousin on a three-way call. I have spoken with Strong dozens of times on the phone and once from his jail cell. He’s affable and outgoing, but at times dizzying.
When he calls, he’s often breathless. He’s complaining about a detail in the case that won’t be presented in court, or how police were lying. He can sound conspiratorial.
But it’s hard to say how you would act if you were guilty of killing seven people compared with how you would act if you were innocent.
He called me on April 14, clearly upset. The defense had just rested its case. He talked about evidence that wasn’t presented, about the witness who changed his description, and vented about his attorneys. There was a long silence at the end of our conversation. I asked him which way he thought the jury would sway.
“I don’t know,” he said.