In a deal that spared him a potential death sentence, a man pleaded guilty Wednesday to murder for the stabbing deaths of his sister-in-law and her 6-year-old daughter in their Canoga Park home nearly five years ago.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen immediately sentenced Mario Estrada Ochoa, 36, to a pair of consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole for the May 14, 2010, killings of Martha Camacho, 21, and her daughter, Valerie.
Along with his guilty plea to the murder charges, Ochoa admitted the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders and using a knife in the commission of the crime.
“He’s a vicious killer,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the judge.
Outside court, the prosecutor told City News Service that Ochoa believed his sister-in-law had encouraged her sibling to ask him for a divorce after he had stayed out the night before drinking.
Silverman told the judge that it was a “horrendous crime scene,” with Camacho suffering more than 30 sharp-force injuries as she was being chased through the family’s home. Ochoa posed the woman’s body in an attempt to make it look like a stranger had sexually assaulted her, the prosecutor said.
“He then murdered the only witness to this crime,” Silverman said of the 6-year-old, who was home for the day because she wasn’t feeling well.
The woman’s husband — who discovered his childhood sweetheart’s body — initially believed that his daughter had been abducted. Authorities later discovered the girl’s body — she had suffered about 14 sharp-force injuries and was nearly decapitated — stuffed behind a couch, the prosecutor said.
The District Attorney’s Office had announced last year that it would seek the death penalty against Ochoa, who’s been jailed without bail since he was arrested in January 2011.
According to a statement read in court by his attorneys, Ochoa admitted to police after being taken into custody that he had stabbed the two after getting into an argument with Camacho over his marriage.
Ochoa stabbed his niece after she saw him covered in blood and asked him what he had done and whether her mother was there, according to the statement.
“By pleading to both counts of first-degree murder and admitting the special allegations, Mr. Ochoa is accepting responsibility for the murders and acknowledging his guilt,” the statement says.
Another family member, Manuel Carmona, was in custody for more than a year until testing determined that DNA and fingerprints at the crime scene belonged solely to Ochoa, according to Silverman.
Ochoa’s attorneys acknowledged that face in the statement, which says the defense’s “review of the discovery materials and our independent investigation shows that there is no evidence — physical or otherwise — tying Manuel Carmona to the crime scene and there is absolutely no reason to believe he was involved in the tragic murders.”
Mariela Carmona, who was married to the defendant at the time of the crimes, spoke directly to him during the sentencing hearing about the loss of her sister and niece.
“Honestly, I hope you rot in hell,” his ex-wife said through a Spanish interpreter. “Nothing is the same any more. I don’t know why you had to do this.”
Family friend Gloria Marina Nieves said the girl would have been 11 this Sunday. “And I know all of us would be preparing for her birthday, nut now we only have to visit the cemetery.”
She told the judge that she wished Ochoa could be sentenced to death “because he killed a defenseless little girl.”
— City News Service