A state appeals court panel Friday upheld a man’s conviction for the cold-case murder of a woman whose body was found in a vacant lot west of the Harbor (110) Freeway in the Westlake district in 1989.
Orlando Dejesus Arredondodonis, now 57, is serving a life prison term without the possibility of parole for the September 1989 killing of Monica Wertlieb.
He was convicted in April 2024 of first-degree murder, with jurors also finding true the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a rape.
Jurors also found the defendant guilty of raping the 39-year-old victim, but that charge was dismissed at sentencing because Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter noted that the statute of limitations on the rape charge had expired by the time he was charged in 2017.
The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s contention that there was insufficient evidence to conclude the rape-murder special circumstance.
“Arredondodonis beat Wertlieb on the street to the point that she did not resist being dragged up the driveway and into the field, but before he inflicted the strangulation and incision injuries that caused her death,” the appellate court justices found in their 15-page opinion.
“Had Arredondodonis intended only to kill Wertlieb, he would not have needed to go to the trouble of dragging her unconscious body nearly 200 feet before killing her — he could have strangled her or slashed her on the street and left her there. But Arredondodonis chose to drag Wertlieb a considerable distance to a secluded location where he could continue his attack with less likelihood of being observed.”
The panel noted that “a reasonable jury could conclude that his motive for moving her to that less-visible location rather than killing her during the initial attack was that he intended to rape her.”
The justices also rejected the defense’s claim that jurors should not have heard about an alleged 2017 domestic violence incident between Arredondodonis and his partner, who testified that wouldn’t lie for him and wasn’t afraid of him.
Wertlieb was found dead Sept. 17, 1989, in the 1300 block of West Third Street, near Bixel Street and Lucas Avenue.
Deputy District Attorney Alexander Lara told jurors during his closing argument that the evidence showed the victim was knocked unconscious and then dragged about 190 feet from the sidewalk to an area that was “completely hidden” in an elevated lot, where she was raped and her throat was cut with a broken bottle.
DNA testing done on evidence collected at the scene — including the victim’s body — subsequently linked Arredondodonis to the crime, according to the prosecutor.
“Everything is a match to the defendant,” the deputy district attorney said.
Arredondodonis’ trial attorney, Peter Chung, countered that a “reasonable interpretation” of the evidence was that his client had sex with the victim a day or two earlier without being responsible for her murder.
“The issue is who did it,” he said of the woman’s killing. “Did it occur during a rape and was there a rape at all?”
He said there was “a lot of speculation,” telling the jury that it was not clear where she was killed or when she died.
The defense attorney asked jurors to acquit the defendant of both charges.
In his rebuttal argument, the prosecutor countered that there was “no DNA of anybody else” and said that Arredondodonis had adamantly denied having sex with the woman when he was questioned by police.
Arredondodonis was arrested in October 2017 by detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division and has remained behind bars since then
At his May 2024 sentencing, the judge called the killing “an absolutely atrocious crime,” and noted that the defendant did not show an “ounce of regret” when he was subsequently interviewed by Los Angeles police.
In a statement read in court on her behalf, the victim’s daughter said her mother had made the “ultimate sacrifice” by putting her up for adoption after she was born in 1981. She wrote that she has subsequently been able to connect with some of Wertlieb’s family.
“But because of Orlando Arredondodonis, I’ll never be able to meet my mother. I’ll never hear her voice. I’ll never get to look into her eyes,” Katie Hepburn wrote in the statement.
She called her biological mother “an innocent woman” who lived simply and was an “easy target for a cowardly criminal” who went on to live his life “with no care or consideration of what he did to my mother or to our family,” and wrote that he “should never be allowed the hope of being set free.”
Wertlieb’s cousin, Mike Gale, called the victim a “gentle soul” and said she would be “no match” for anyone in any type of struggle.
“He’s finally able to suffer the consequences of his actions,” Gale said of the defendant.