Murder trial delayed for 1994 death of 7-year-old girl

A district judge on Monday delayed the capital murder trial of Greg Wallen Jr. in the 1994 slaying and sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl.

Judge Elissa Cadish ordered the trial moved to Sept. 9, 2013, after a motion to continue the case filed by Wallen's lawyers.

Wallen, 40, was arrested in 2009, 15 years after Diana Hernandez disappeared from the Sandpiper Village Apartments, 3955 Algonquin Drive, near Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway.

Diana was found on Easter Sunday, April 3, 1994, a day after she vanished in broad daylight.

Her body was inside a cardboard box in a trash bin in the apartment complex. She was suffocated and sexually assaulted, authorities said.

Las Vegas police linked Wallen, a neighbor who lived downstairs from the girl, to the killing through DNA recovered on Diana's body and fingerprints found on the cardboard box.

Wallen was one of dozens of volunteers who helped search for the girl the day she went missing.

The development frustrated Adriana Morales, Diana's fraternal twin. She said she was told last week by an official with the district attorney's office the trial would be delayed, but she was still disappointed.

"You prepare yourself mentally for it and then it doesn't happen," Morales said. "Then you have to prepare yourself to do it all over again a year from now."

Cadish's decision was also met with mixed reaction from a California woman.

On Sunday, the Review-Journal reported that many violent allegations were made against Wallen in 1985, when he was a 12-year-old boy in San Bernardino, Calif.

Carletta Doherty is convinced that Wallen killed her daughter, Tina Doherty, 6, who was found n a drainage ditch less than a mile from her house on July 12, 1985.

The Review-Journal obtained copies of San Bernardino police reports that said investigators focused on Wallen, who lived a street over from the Dohertys. Police determined that no homicide had been committed by a young Wallen.

The San Bernardino coroner said Tina Doherty died by drowning, but her manner of death remains "undetermined."

San Bernardino police said the original evidence and files pertaining to Tina's death were discarded because the case was never classified as a homicide.

Doherty knows Wallen will never face charges in California, but she has been hoping for justice through the trial in connection with Diana's slaying .

"I think it's ridiculous," Doherty said. "They know who he (Wallen) is. They know what he's done. Why are they dragging it out?"

Doherty said she feels for the Hernandez family, but on the other hand, at least Wallen is still locked up.

"He's not on the street," she said. "He's not harming another child."

Contact reporter Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Contact reporter Antonio Planas at aplanas@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638.