The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case against a man convicted of murdering a prostitute in her West Los Angeles apartment 36 years ago.
Leonard Dominguez was found guilty in November 2013 of the second-degree murder of Sandra Phillips, who was found dead inside her apartment on April 9, 1979. The 33-year-old woman had been strangled.
In a ruling this April that upheld Dominguez’s conviction, a three- justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal noted that Phillips “worked as an ‘outcall’ prostitute who catered to wealthier clientele” and that the friends who discovered her body had warned her not to bring clients back to her apartment.
Los Angeles police said the case remained unsolved for more than 30 years until detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Cold Case Special Section asked to have biological evidence tested that had been recovered from the scene.
A genetic profile was uploaded into the California Department of Justice’s CODIS databank, and detectives were notified that there was a “cold hit” between the genetic profile and Dominguez, whose genetic profile was entered into the system after a narcotics arrest.
“Without that arrest, we wouldn’t have found him,” Deputy District Attorney Jane Creighton said after the jury’s verdict.
Dominguez, who was arrested in March 2010, admitted to police that he had sex with Phillips, but denied killing her, the appellate court panel noted in its April 30 ruling.
Dominguez is serving a 15-year-to-life term in state prison.
— City News Service