Mexico extradites man wanted in 2001 Carlsbad murder

By Dana Littlefield, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 4, 2010 at 12:16 p.m.

A man accused of raping and killing an 84-year-old woman in a Carlsbad retirement community more than eight years ago is expected to be arraigned Thursday afternoon on murder and other charges.

Alejandro Avalos Fernandez, 33, was extradited to San Diego on Tuesday from Mexico. He is accused in the death of Gladys Conrad, a retired psychiatrist who was found dead at her residence Sept. 1, 2001, by a neighbor.

She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, authorities said.

Fernandez was arrested in Mexico City on Jan. 23, 2009. It took 13 months for him to be extradited to San Diego, prosecutors said at a news conference Thursday morning.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said the murder charge against Fernandez comes with special-circumstance allegations of murder during a rape and sodomy. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of life in prison without parole.

Dumanis explained that as a condition of the extradition agreement with Mexico, prosecutors here agreed not to seek the death penalty.

In 2004, authorities linked DNA from the Conrad case to DNA from an unsolved attempted rape case in Los Angeles. The victim was a 64-year-old woman.

The suspect remained unidentified until 2007 when Fernandez was arrested on a narcotics charge in Los Angeles. He was released before his DNA was entered into a database.

Conrad’s two daughters attended the news conference and plan to attend the afternoon arraignment. One now works as a psychologist; the other works as an emergency room doctor.

“She was a real pioneer,â€