hispanic hitmen
The arrest was based upon the statement of a teenager, Robert
Garcia, (no relation to Miguel), who, after many hours of what he
later alleged was “bullying and scaring” by police, said he broke
down and told them what they wanted to hear. He said he was with
Dennis Martinez in the back seat of Juve’s Camaro and was an
eye-witness to the shooting. He said Miguel was the shooter, and
Juve dared him to do it.
It was later determined that Robert Garcia was incarcerated on
the night of the shooting and could not have been an eye-witness.
At that point, the District Attorney dropped all charges for lack of
evidence. Robert Garcia is now dead.
In July, 1992, after reading Who Killed My Daughter?,
Dennis Martinez – a loose cannon with an alcohol problem -- made a
drunken call to 911 and said that he and his friends were hired by
the Vietnamese to kill Kait, that he personally was paid $100, and
that he was the one who fired four shots and disposed of the weapon.
Police did not elect to pursue this.
Newspaper Article January 1990
Although Kait’s family does not believe that
Kait was the victim of a “random drive-by shooting” by this trio,
it’s not impossible that these suspects were hired to chase and
terrorize Kait, to frighten her into keeping her mouth shut. And
when that didn’t work, and it became apparent she was headed – not
back to the apartment she shared with Dung, but to her parents’
house -- someone else jumped into the picture and shot her dead.
Kait apparently was chased TWICE that evening, once on her way to Sharon’s, and again when she left there. A truck driver, on his way to make a timed delivery, testified under hypnosis that he saw a girl in a car that resembled Kait’s being chased and harassed by Hispanics in a Camaro in the same area of Lomas in which Kait was shot. But he reported that Kait’s Ford Tempo was headed west in the direction of Sharon’s house, not east in the direction Kait was driving when she was killed. And the truck driver witnessed this incident over an hour before the shooting, at the time that police reports say she was driving to Sharon’s house.
When police went to Miguel Garcia’s house to
arrest him, they confiscated his guns and ammunition. Part of that
ammunition consisted of blanks. Kait’s family wonders why anybody
would possess blanks for any reason other than to terrorize without
causing physical injury?
what happened after their arrests?
Miguel Garcia spent 18 months in prison, awaiting a trial that never occurred. When charges were dropped, he was shot in the stomach (alleged suicide attempt). He survived, but just barely.
Dennis (Marty) Martinez spent a couple of days in
juvenile detention and was released. No matter what he said, police
refused to take a statement. Three weeks after the trio was arrested,
Marty was found lying in the doorway
of his home with his wrist slashed (alleged suicide attempt). He
survived.
Juve Escobedo aka Jose Hernandez never spent a day
of jail time. He just walked off and that was that. People kept
phoning APD to report where he was, (usually at his girlfriend’s
apartment), but no one ever came to pick him up. Juve is apparently
somebody’s “Golden Boy.”
psychic reading
by psychic detective, Betty Muench, using automatic writing:
Question: What may we know about the auto body shop on Arno in the time period surrounding Kait’s death---activities there that may be linked to her murder—and any connection between the cops who hung out at that place and any of the suspects:
Answer: “There is this suspect, Juve Escobedo. There is a feeling of someone who is full of bravado and who seems to enter a place belly first. He seems to be there and enters midst much attention to him. This was after the death of Kait. A sense of expectancy from this one… He is to receive something.”