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Saturday, July 04, 1998
Murder case built on detail
Police officials use a pager number and a Kmart receipt to help present a murder case against a man.
By Caren Benjamin
Review-Journal
Being organized isn't always the best way to avoid trouble.
Take the case of Kenneth Curtis, charged with the murder of Marysol Peres. The 21-year-old stripper's body was found in December in a Dumpster wrapped in a blue, queen-size Martha Stewart brand sheet.
No one saw the young woman get shot. There was no trail of blood leading to a suspect.
But Curtis had been well-trained by his ex-girlfriend, a self-described neat-freak, to keep his receipts in a shoe box, according to grand jury testimony.
"I told him to put all of his receipts in the box or I would throw them away if I find them on the counter," Leticia Morfin testified in April. The body found Dec. 20, 1997, was that of her sister.
Several days later, Morfin went through her receipts. Though she had broken up with Curtis before the slaying, she learned some habits linger long after love has soured.
In a box of her former boyfriend's items, she found a receipt from Kmart, dated Dec. 19, 1997. That was the last day anyone can remember seeing her sister. The receipt was for a blue, queen-size Martha Stewart sheet.
This is the second time in his criminal career that Curtis has been arrested because of a minuscule detail that very nearly was not discovered.
In the murder case, Curtis was not a serious suspect at first. He was one of the first people police spoke to after a homeless man found Peres, who friends called Mimi, in the trash bin at Racquet Club Apartments, 98 S. Martin Luther King Blvd.
Though she was naked from the waist down there were no signs of sexual assault, according to a medical examiner. That Peres was still wearing jewelry made robbery an unlikely motive, police testified.
Co-workers at the Deja Vu Showgirls strip club testified that they doubted Peres, who went by Selena at work, had ever dated a customer or worked as a prostitute. Friends said she was not involved in a violent relationship.
The only clue police had was a pager left next to her body. Police called the last number left on it and reached Curtis.
Curtis identified himself under a false name, Mario Newsomel, but was otherwise "very helpful" at his police interview according to Las Vegas Detective Dwayne Morgan. He told police he knew Peres and was involved with her sister, the detective testified.
He neglected to mention that the relationship, which had been troubled for some months, had ended two days before Peres was killed, Morgan testified. Morfin had left Curtis a note on the counter of the apartment they once shared and then had gotten a police escort to help her pick up her belongings, according to her testimony.
In the course of interviewing Curtis, police learned he was wanted in California on assault and robbery charges, so he was arrested.
He called Morfin to pick up some of his things. Among them she found his day planner with all the pages ripped out after Dec. 17. She found letters he'd written to her, desperate pleas for her to stay. She also found the receipt for the sheet.
The sisters were extremely close, Morfin testified. They shared "their most private thoughts." Sometimes, Morfin said her sister accused her of having "obsessive-compulsive disorder" because she was so organized. Morfin knew her sister did not have blue, queen-size sheets. She also knew Curtis did not. She turned the receipt over to the police.
From there the circle around Curtis began to close. Curtis, a carpet cleaner, had worked at the Racquet Club Apartments.
A friend testified he had a conversation with Curtis about killing Peres.
"He started telling me about if he couldn't have Leticia back, it wouldn't do no good for him to hurt her so he would definitely hurt things that she cared for and loved. ... He talked about her sister," the friend, Thomas Ramirez, testified.
San Diego Police Detective Peter Griffin appeared before the grand jury to introduce evidence that Curtis had a lengthy criminal record in California. In one of those cases, which is pending, Curtis is alleged to have set up a fake carjacking in 1996.
According to Griffin, Curtis went to a car lot, requested a test drive, then said he got carjacked. A patrol officer spotted the stolen vehicle and the carjacker was arrested.
During the investigation Curtis and the suspect denied knowing each other.
But Griffin discovered something odd during the interview.
"I noticed the suspect and the victim had California identification cards with the same residence address," the officer remembered. "It turned out they were cousins."
Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, who presented the murder case to the grand jury, said these kind of mistakes are what law enforcement has to hope for in cases that are otherwise mysteries.
"The business of prosecuting killers is not easy," Roger said. "But fortunately for us, we're not dealing with rocket scientists."
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