A “violent, heartless” murderer who killed his father, stepmother and two half-brothers in their Hyde Park home, when he was a teenager, and trying to make the 1999 shootings look like a murder-suicide was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy — who criticized the Los Angeles Police Department for its initial investigation into the killings — noted that Saulo Cesar Alvarado, now 35, will be entitled to a hearing in 25 years to determine whether he should be released on parole given that he was a juvenile at the time of the shootings.
“I personally don’t believe that you should ever be released,” the judge told the defendant, calling him a “violent, heartless individual whose character is set.”
Alvarado was convicted April 2 of four counts of first-degree murder for the April 1999 killings of Rudolfo Alvarado, 51, Eva Veronica, 36, and their sons Renzo, 16, and Victor, 4, along with two counts of lewd acts on a child involving a then-underage family member.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder while lying in wait. He was ineligible for the death penalty because he was 16 at the time.
Each of the victims was shot in the head. The murder weapon was placed in Renzo Alvarado’s hand to try to make it appear that it was a murder-suicide, according to Deputy District Attorney Victor Avila.
Alvarado was charged with the killings in September 2015, after Alvarado’s half-sister came forward as a witness. He was extradited from Guatemala, where he had been deported after a 2003 rape conviction.
The judge said she believed that LAPD personnel “failed miserably in performing their duties” during the initial investigation into the killings.
“I think part of the reason is institutional racism and indifference,” she said, noting that she did not believe the killings were investigated in the same way as if the victims were from an affluent white family.
She also criticized the testimony of a deputy medical examiner who conducted the initial autopsy on Renzo Alvarado and initially classified it as a suicide.
“… I do know that a lot more should have been done,” Kennedy said, noting that she credited LAPD Detective Mark Hahn — who was not the initial investigator — with doing the work required after Alvarado’s half-sister went to police.
In a letter read by the prosecutor, the victim’s half-sister also criticized the LAPD for its initial investigation, writing that “a murderer was let free” and that she believes the LAPD “did nothing because we were minorities.”
Sharon Diaz, whose two young cousins were killed, told the judge that the family never believed that the teenage victim shot and killed his parents and his little brother.
“In our hearts, we always knew that it wasn’t him,” she said of Renzo.
Another cousin, Evelyn Diaz, said, “Almost 20 years later, our family is being vindicated.”
Just before being sentenced, the defendant said through a Spanish interpreter, “I will get out because my faith in God is very big.”
During the trial, the prosecutor called it a “horrific crime.”
“An entire family was massacred on this day. Why were they killed? Because this defendant did not feel love and … killed the source of his pain — the people that did not love him,” the prosecutor said.
One of Alvarado’s attorneys, Robert Cortes, cast doubt on the reliability of two of the prosecution’s key witnesses, including the defendant’s half-sister. He pointed to a detailed statement she made to detectives that she later said she didn’t remember and asked jurors to consider the notion of a “false memory.”
The defense also urged the jury to listen carefully to the 911 call made by Saulo Alvarado, saying the defendant deserved an Oscar if he was making up the story he told.
In his rebuttal argument, the prosecutor noted that evidence showed there was no gunshot residue on the 16-year-old’s hand and that the biomechanics and autopsy evidence were “inconsistent” with a murder-suicide.
“It was staged. The defendant planted that gun,” the prosecutor said.
According to news reports at the time of the murders, police initially believed Renzo was the killer.
The defendant told authorities that he and Renzo’s 10-year-old half-sister found the bodies after returning home after three hours away. Investigators said all four burners on a gas stove were open and a candle was on the floor next to Renzo’s body. The flame apparently went out before igniting the gas fumes.