The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to hear the case of a man the prosecution contended was the mastermind of the beating death of a 20-year-old man whose body was found over the side of a mountain road in Azusa Canyon.
Matthew Capiendo, now 29, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the killing of Julian Hamori-Andrade, whose body was discovered May 30, 2018, in heavy brush about 30 feet down a hill alongside Highway 39 in Azusa Canyon.
Capiendo — the only one of the five defendants to go to trial in connection with the killing — was convicted in November 2023 of first-degree murder and kidnapping.
The panel acquitted Capiendo of a separate robbery charge involving the same victim.
Four other defendants charged along with Capiendo pleaded no contest or guilty in exchange for lesser sentences.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench — who denied the defense’s motion for a new trial — called it one of the “most brutal” murder cases she has seen, and told Capiendo that she couldn’t understand how a person could do what was done to the victim.
Deputy District Attorney Sarika Kim said after the verdict that Capiendo planned and initiated the attack, directed the victim to be moved to Azusa Canyon, engaged in a group beating there and climbed down the edge of the canyon after the victim was pushed over to “finish him off” in the words of one of his accomplices. Capiendo allegedly told the other defendants that the victim had stolen marijuana from him, but there was no proof of that, according to the prosecutor.
Capiendo’s trial attorney, Anthony Garcia, had urged the jury to reject the special circumstance allegations and to consider the lesser count of second-degree murder, which would have made his client eligible for parole.
Authorities said the victim was beaten at Capiendo’s home in the 6100 block of Goodway Drive in the Azusa area, where authorities found a large pool of blood on the floor two days earlier. Hamori-Andrade was then driven to Azusa Canyon, where again he was beaten and thrown over the side of the road, according to investigators.
The victim’s mother, Desiree Andrade, told Capiendo at his sentencing that she had waited five years and eight months to be able to “call you a `murderer.”’
“You are a monster,” she told the defendant, noting that he didn’t do it by himself and summoned others to help him.
“What you did to Julian he did not deserve … You know that,” she said, adding that she had driven this week to Azusa Canyon — the spot where her son had been left to die — and that she became “more and more angry” with Capiendo as she stood there.
The victim’s older sister, Jasmine Hamori, told the defendant that “It was a very cowardly thing for you to do what you did to my brother and take him away from my family and I.”
“Really? Five against one?” she said. “My brother had a long life to live. He was full of laughter, jokes and love, but you robbed him of that. He lost being able to be a father, an uncle and most importantly, being my little brother. I struggled trying to find the right words to say today and found that was because there is no right thing to say to someone who has clearly shown no remorse for their actions.”
The victim’s sister told the defendant that the only comfort she will have leaving court was that she has been “waiting six years to know that you will be locked up for the rest of your life.”
The victim’s younger sister wrote in a statement read by her mother that she was 10 years old when her brother was taken away from her and that she was “disgusted” by Capiendo and happy to know that he would be spending his life in prison.
The judge told the victim’s family that she was “very sorry for what you had to go through,” telling Andrade — who diligently attended the court proceedings — that her son was “very lucky to have you as a mother.”
In a ruling last October, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal wrote that “the evidence of defendant’s guilt is overwhelming,” finding that the record shows he invited the victim to his home “to facilitate a surprise attack.”
The appellate court panel noted that blood found in the defendant’s home in the Azusa area was “statistically matched” to the victim, and that a mixture of blood statistically matching the two was also found in the truck of one of Capiendo’s four co-defendants and at different locations at the Azusa Canyon crime scene.
The appellate court justices found that there was insufficient evidence to support the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a robbery, but determined that had no impact on his sentence given the jury’s finding on two other special circumstance allegations — murder while lying in wait and murder during the commission of a kidnapping.