A panel of Fourth District Court of Appeal justices Wednesday upheld the first-degree murder conviction of a 54-year-old man for orchestrating the killing of his wife, who was a state corrections officer, in Anaheim 18 years ago for financial gain.
Nuzzio Begaren was sentenced in May 2014 to 25 years to life in prison for the Jan. 17, 1998, murder of Elizabeth Wheat Begaren, who he married about six months earlier.
Begaren hired gang members, who ambushed his wife along the Riverside (91) Freeway to make it look like a robbery. Begaren, however, was actually trying to collect on a $1 million life insurance policy he took out on his spouse, according to trial testimony.
On the day of the murder, Begaren, his wife and his 10-year-old daughter went to a Macy’s store in Burbank, said Senior Deputy District Larry Yellin. The trip to the store, during which Begaren had his wife carry about $5,000 in cash in her purse, was part of a ruse to establish an alibi for the defendant, according to Yellin, who said the cash was payment the killers would collect after an ambush.
About 11 p.m., Begaren pulled the family’s Kia Sportage off the 91 Freeway in Anaheim and then started to get back on the highway, but the gang members following them “forced” the vehicle off the road, Yellin said.
As alleged gunman Guillermo Espinoza got out of the car, Elizabeth Begaren tried to run from the vehicle and was shot in the face and chest, Yellin said.
The case went cold until Begaren’s arrest in 2012. Authorities finally caught up to Espinoza in Mexico earlier this year and he is awaiting trial.
Anaheim police Sgt. Daron Wyatt cracked the case when he found a phone bill Begaren had tried to eliminate, the appellate panel noted in its ruling.
The phone bill was the issue Begaren focused on in his appeal. His attorney argued that the AT&T custodian of records was not qualified to testify on the authenticity of the phone bil from 1998.
The custodian testified he was unaware of phone billing procedures back in the late 1990s, but when he looked at the bill, he said “based on how it looks, it’s — not a whole lot has changed. It still shows the date and time where it was called from. It looks about the same as I am used to seeing,” according to the ruling.
Begaren made the call to a “boyhood friend who had actually pulled the trigger at Begaren’s behest,” according to the ruling.
Co-defendant Rudy Duran was sentenced last May to six years in prison after striking a plea bargain and has since been released from jail. Another co- defendant, Jose Luis Sandoval, also reached a plea deal and was sentenced to time served behind bars awaiting trial.
— Wire reports