Thread: Man gets two life terms in slayings

Man gets two life terms in slayings
16-year-old boy one of two killed at Henrico apartment, which served as a brothel
BY TOM CAMPBELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Saturday, April 29, 2006

Antonio Marco Herrera showed no reaction when he heard, through a Spanish interpreter, Henrico County Circuit Judge L.A. Harris Jr. order him to prison for two life terms.

The 21-year-old native of El Salvador pleaded guilty in March to two murders on May 23, 2003 -- those of Hector Peres, 16, and Jose Eduardo Trinidad Ortiz, 34, in a London Towne apartment that was being operated as a brothel.

He also faces sentencing May 22 in Richmond Circuit Court for two connected murders.

According to prosecutors, Herrera went to the apartment that night with three other men. One was Luis "El Morro" Morales, a South Richmond pimp who was in a business dispute with a competitor who operated the apartment-brothel. Morales offered Herrera $2,000 to kill the rival pimp.

The other two men who took part in the killings were Roberto del Cid and Alfredo Lemus. Two more men, Mynor Catalan and Mario Gonzalez, both 20, came along in a second car but did not go into the apartment.

After his arrest, Del Cid gave police details of what happened that night and identified Herrera as the shooter, which Herrera has denied.

Del Cid said Herrera killed the two men in the apartment and later that night killed Catalan and Gonzalez after the murder group decided they could be dangerous witnesses. Their bodies were found by a fisherman at about daylight at Ancarrow's Landing in South Richmond.

Del Cid and Herrera pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in Henrico and two counts in Richmond. Del Cid's sentencings are set for May 9 and 10.

All four who took part in the killings left Richmond soon after. Herrera and Del Cid went to Wilson, N.C. Morales and Lemus disappeared, but police believe they drove to Mexico, where Morales has family.

Herrera's lawyer, Theodore Bruns, argued yesterday that the bulk of the prosecu- tion case came from Del Cid, who had motive to identify Herrera as the shooter to make his potential testimony more valuable.

Bruns said Herrera left El Salvador at 13 to escape poverty after his older brother, who had fought in the civil war in that country, returned home and abused Herrera and others in the family. Bruns said Herrera has minimal education and a childlike outlook on the world.

"I don't ask you to take pity on him," Bruns told the judge. Regardless of Herrera's role in the killings, what happened was too serious for that. "We ask only that you give him a sentence he can see the end of so he can pursue whatever he can to better himself."

Commonwealth's Attorney Wade Kizer argued for the two life sentences by reminding the judge that Herrera executed four people in one night, and one of them was a 16-year-old boy. He said Herrera had only recently been released from jail, after a conviction for shooting into an occupied car in New Kent County. After fleeing Henrico, he was arrested in North Carolina, and subsequently convicted there, for raping a child.

However tough one's life has been, Kizer said, "You don't put a gun to the back of someone else's head and pull the trigger, which he did four times."

Harris agreed. At the close of arguments he imposed sentence and recessed court.

"These were just absolutely senseless executions for no reason at all," Harris said.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Sa ... 5855934842

"We ask only that you give him a sentence he can see the end of so he can pursue whatever he can to better himself."

Good plan. Maybe next time he'll murder six people.