Thread: WA - Jury Recommends 49 Years for Blanco Garcia in Pham Murder

NBC Washington
By Julie Carey
Friday, Aug 23, 2013

A jury found Julio Blanco Garcia guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Fairfax teen Vanessa Pham. News4 Northern Virginia Bureau Chief Julie Carey reports.

Just two hours after they found him guilty of first-degree murder, a jury recommended Julio Blanco Garcia be sentenced to 49 years in prison in the death of Vanessa Pham, a 19-year-old college student who he killed after she offered him a ride.

The jury recommended a sentence of 30 years plus 19 years for Pham's life after hearing emotional testimony from Pham's mother, featuring photos and video of the once happy teenager.

Pham's family and friends did not want to comment Thursday, but prosecutors said they were content with the results.

"Obviously they wanted a life sentence, they thought that was appropriate since the defendent took their daughter's life," Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said. "I believe they do [think justice has been served]."

Blanco Garcia, an undocumented worker prior to his arrest, had said he was high on PCP during the 2010 attack. Whether the murder was premeditated was a key issue in the trial.

The defense argued Blanco Garcia was too high to plan a murder and no one would begin a premeditated murder in a shopping center parking lot with so many surveillance cameras.

But the trial also featured a video confession recorded during an interrogation in December 2012 in which Blanco Garcia admitted to the murder. The recording was played in court Wednesday, leaving Pham's relatives in tears.

"Like, I can't even say if I had my daughter with me, because I was really high," Blanco Garcia told police. "I remember I asked [Pham] to drop me off at the hospital, then she took the wrong way. In my mind, because I was really high, I thought she was going to do something to me. I had a knife in my backpack... and then I did what I did."

• RAW VIDEO: Garcia confesses to stabbing Vanessa Pham

The defense rested Thursday after calling just three witnesses to the stand and seeing a motion to reduce the charges rejected by the judge.
Pham was found fatally stabbed inside her car June 27, 2010, along Arlington Boulevard, after giving Blanco Garcia and his baby daughter a ride when he said he needed to get to a hospital.

Blanco Garcia was charged with Pham's murder in December 2012. He admitted to stabbing Pham several times in the chest as she cried. He said he drove her car for a while before he crashed, left the knife behind, grabbed his daughter and then left the scene.

Other testimony Thursday morning covered past drug use by Blanco Garcia. Two police officers called by the defense discussed a 2006 incident in which Blanco Garcia had a bad reaction after smoking crack and cut his arms. He was taken by police to a psychiatric hospital in 2006 but was not admitted.

Cell phone records place him in the area of the murder at the time Pham was killed, testimony revealed Wednesday. Four calls were tracked from Blanco Garcia's cell phone to a Merrifield-area Verizon tower in the minutes just after police believe the teenager was stabbed to death.
In the video, Blanco Garcia said he had called his mother.

An analysis of two computers taken from Blanco Garcia's apartment show that he had a keen interest in the police investigation during the 2 1/2 years that authorities were searching for Pham's killer.

A computer forensic specialist from the Fairfax County police dept, Jason Friedman, said that Blanco Garcia often entered the names "Vanessa" or" Pham" in his search engine.

Friedman discovered that Blanco Garcia visited NBCWashington.com several times to read stories about the search for her killer. Blanco Garcia also searched topics related to PCP, other drugs and drug treatment, Friedman testified.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE ON NBCWashington.com:

• Bloody Evidence Presented in Vanessa Pham Murder Trial
• Lawyers: Defendant Didn't Plan to Kill Vanessa Pham
• Prosecutors: Vanessa Pham's Good Deed Led to Her Death
• DNA Evidence in Vanessa Pham Murder Case Revealed

Source: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/lo...220679551.html

Washington Post IGNORES Fact Vanessa Phams Killer an ILLEGAL ALIEN ...

Washington Post IGNORES Fact Vanessa Phams Killer an ILLEGAL ALIEN
Posted by: WingNut ()
Date: August 23, 2013 09:16AM

I can't find it anywhere on the page, I guess the reporter did not know?

Is this not an important part of the story- a PREVENTABLE murder- if ICE and DHS did their mother****ing jobs every once in a while... Deported those who are arrested?

Beautiful young woman killed in the prime of her life by a PCP smoking illegal alien (with a butcher knife in his backpack)....

This faggot ass writer Justin Jouvenal cannot find the space on the page to include the fact the killer should NOT have even been in this country. My ****ing god I hope that Bezos shitcans this asshole and he finds his righteous place in life working at Starbucks.

http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/fo...3/1286837.html

Re: Washington Post IGNORES Fact Vanessa Phams Killer an ILLEGAL ALIEN
Posted by: lolwtf2 ()
Date: August 23, 2013 09:42AM

I asked this in the other thread.. if he was actually illegal. My guess is yes because NBC4 referred to him as:

"an undocumented worker"

Source:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/lo...220679551.html

---

I've seen in other articles that he was also arrested 6-7 years ago as well. If he was "undocumented" ... *illegal* ... then wtf.. the system surely failed us and Vanessa Pham.

Immigration is a tough topic. However, when you're illegal and you've been arrested for a crime .. how the **** do you justify not enforcing immigration laws at that point? **** that. This guy was a documented criminal.

Re: Washington Post IGNORES Fact Vanessa Phams Killer an ILLEGAL ALIEN
Posted by: lolwtf2 ()
Date: August 23, 2013 09:44AM

Actually.. **** me.. 3 seconds of Googling confirms the little shit is illegal:

http://fairfaxcity.patch.com/groups/...-u-s-illegally

http://www.examiner.com/article/ille...nt-s-murder-va

--
"On Dec. 13, the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, which consists of U.S. Marshals deputies and inspectors, Fairfax County Police detectives and sheriff's deputies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Washington, DC Fugitive Operations Unit officers arrested Julio Blanco-Garcia, a citizen and national of Guatemala, in Vienna, Va. on a homicide warrant issued out of Fairfax County, Va. ERO officers placed a detainer on Julio Blanco-Garcia after it was determined that he was in violation of U.S. immigration law."
--

WashPost's Jouvenal Still Refusing to Note Convicted Murderer's Illegal Immigrant Status


Yesterday evening a northern Virginia jury convicted Julio Blanco-Garcia, an illegal immigrant with a history of scrapes with law enforcement, of first-degree murder in the July 2010 stabbing death of Vanessa Pham. The 19-year-old victim was giving Blanco-Garcia a ride to a local hospital when he killed her in a fit of PCP-fueled paranoia.

The Washington Post's Justin Jouvenal has been covering the trial and has repeatedly failed to note Blanco-Garcia's status as an illegal immigrant. Today's 22-paragraph Metro section front-pager was no exception. It's not like this is not public knowledge. As Whitney Rhodes of the AOL-owned Patch.com news website noted on December 15, 2012:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Friday the man accused of murdering 19-year-old Vanessa Pham is in violation of immigration law.

ICE placed a detainer on suspect Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia, 27, on Thursday, the day he was arrested and charged with Pham's 2010 murder. They released the following statement on Friday

"On Dec. 13, the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, which consists of U.S. Marshals deputies and inspectors, Fairfax County Police detectives and sheriff's deputies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Washington, DC Fugitive Operations Unit officers arrested Julio Blanco-Garcia, a citizen and national of Guatemala, in Vienna, Va. on a homicide warrant issued out of Fairfax County, Va. ERO officers placed a detainer on Julio Blanco-Garcia after it was determined that he was in violation of U.S. immigration law."

The detainer requires Fairfax County Police to notify ICE before releasing Blanco-Garcia. ICE will then investigate whether he fits the requirements to be removed from the country.

Blanco-Garcia will complete his criminal trial before ICE takes any action, Nicole Navas, ICE public affairs spokesperson said.

To be fair, back in December, Jouvenal himself did note that ICE officials revealed Blanco-Garcia was in the country illegally, and that he has a prior conviction on a misdemeanor charge, but Blanco-Garcia's illegal immigrant status has not been noted in more recent reporting:

Immigration officials disclosed Friday that Blanco-Garcia was a Guatemalan national who was in the country illegally. Local court records showed a misdemeanor shoplifting conviction in Fairfax County this year but not an extensive criminal background.

The Washington Post has a history of obscuring or omitting the illegal immigrant status of perpetrators of deadly criminal acts. In August 2010, my colleague Tim Graham noted how the paper obscured the illegal immigration status of one Carlos Martinelly-Montano, a serial drunk driver in northern Virginia charged in a fatal DUI incident which took the lives of some local nuns:

A lot of newspaper readers just scan the headlines quickly and choose only a few stories to read, even on the front page. Newspapers are often accused of tabloidish, exaggerated headlines. But sometimes, they do the opposite, with duller headlines that seem designed not to inform -- or offend.

The front page of Tuesday's Washington Post carried the headline "Va. driver had record of DUIs before fatal crash." Here's what it could have said: "Illegal alien had record of DUIs before fatal Sunday morning crash killed nun." The Post also bland-ified the headline inside the paper: "Driver had DUI record before fatal crash in Va." The caption for Carlos Montano on page A-12 also avoided his illegal status: "Carlos Montano, 23, is charged in the crash."
The story itself by Jennifer Buske and Paul Duggan didn't avoid the issue, so why would the headline writers try to dull down the story?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-she...#ixzz2crooTqP5

Move to NEW Section for "Americans Killed by Illegals."