The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case of a man and his ex-wife who were convicted of kidnapping and murdering an accountant who was found dead inside his own car in Carson.
Maricela Mercado, now 46, and her ex-husband, Roman Cerratos, now 45, are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the April 2019 killing of Jeffrey Appel, 32, who was involved a romantic relationship with Mercado.
In a June 11 ruling, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the pair’s convictions for first-degree murder and kidnapping.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a kidnapping, along with allegations that Cerratos personally and intentionally discharged a firearm and used a knife during the commission of the crime.
“The jury could reasonably infer that, given Mercado and Appel’s romantic relationship, Appel would have told Mercado where he was staying while he finished his work for the 2019 tax season,” the panel found in a 30-page opinion. “The jury could also logically infer that Mercado shared this information with Cerratos, who was her ex-husband. Mercado was the logical link between the two men based on her respective relationships with each of them. It would also be reasonable to infer that Mercado and Cerratos planned their encounter with Appel, based on the fact that they encountered each other not at Mercado’s house but at Appel’s car, which was parked close (to) the hotel where he was staying.”
Appel, a Las Vegas resident, was found April 16, 2019, in the front passenger area of his Audi, and had been shot three times and stabbed five times, according to the appellate court panel’s opinion.
Torrance police responded to a parking lot on Torrance Boulevard early that morning after a witness called 911 to report that she heard a man yelling, “Help me,” and saw a woman trying to push the man into the car and shoving the vehicle’s door closed with her arms and shoulder, according to the ruling, which noted that an officer found a shoe, a bloody knife and what appeared to be fresh blood on the ground.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department criminalist subsequently determined that the blood found on the knife was consistent with the DNA profiles of the victim and Cerratos, and that blood from samples taken from the parking lot where the knife was recovered were also consistent with their DNA profiles, the justices noted.
Appel was discovered dead less than two hours later in Carson when a man who was attending a training class for work notified authorities that he saw the parked car with blood on the passenger door and what appeared to be a dead body “stuffed” into the passenger floorboard and seat area, according to the ruling.
Mercado and Cerratos were turned over to U.S. authorities after fleeing to Mexico. Mercado’s then-15-year-old daughter — who had been the subject of an Amber Alert — was returned safely to the United States.
Detectives had said they were concerned for the teen’s safety because of the “extreme violence” used to kill Appel.
Authorities have not said what may have motivated the killing.