Murder of Sierra LaMar: Trial Finally Underway

Opening statements began in a San Jose courtroom Monday in the long-awaited trial of a man charged with murdering Sierra LaMar, a 15-year-old girl from rural Morgan Hill who has not been seen or heard from since March 16, 2012. Antolin Garcia-Torres, now 25, has also been charged with attempting to kidnap three women in separate incidents in Morgan Hill in March 2009. He pleaded not guilty to all four charges.

"Sierra LaMar is dead, and this man killed her," prosecutor David Boyd began, pointing to Garcia-Torres, who looked calm and composed in a gray sweater, a gelled undercut hairstyle and clean shave. Boyd clicked through a slideshow, projecting a photo Sierra took of herself on her MacBook Pro in a borrowed San Jose Sharks sweatshirt, with her hair curled and her tongue sticking out. Within the hour, Sierra had disappeared, Boyd said.

The photo was taken at 7:12 a.m. on March 16, 2012 at her home in the Perry area north of Morgan Hill.
Sierra normally caught the school bus around 7:30 a.m. and had made plans to meet up with her friend Karissa Pugh that morning, Boyd said.

"Sierra never made that bus. She never made that meeting. She never made it to school," Boyd said. "It is a parent's worst nightmare."

Boyd played the 911 call recording of Marlene LaMar's panicked, then choked up, crying voice reporting Sierra's disappearance to dispatchers at 6:27 p.m. Security video images showed Garcia-Torres' distinctive 1998 Volkswagen Jetta leaving the Maple Leaf RV Park where he lived eight miles south of Sierra's bus stop at 7 a.m. the morning she disappeared.

Further slides showed images of the rope and gloves where Sierra's DNA had been found in the trunk of the Jetta, as well as Sierra's backpack containing all of her clothing, bra, underwear, and other essentials like her
inhaler and her lunch money.

"What does that leave Sierra?" Boyd asked. "That leaves her naked."

Sierra's jeans and sweatshirt, Boyd argued, were found with dirt stains consistent with stains that would be left if Sierra had been on her back, dragged by her feet. Reflective beads found in some roads were also found on her clothing. Her jeans also had a strong scent of human urine, Boyd said.

On March 13, 2012, three days before Sierra's disappearance, Garcia-Torres' Safeway club card records reveal that he bought a 20-gallon jug of bleach and a turkey baster, neither of which was found in his trailer, Boyd said.

"Bleach breaks down DNA," Boyd said.

Sierra's body has never been found, and a few of the hundreds of volunteers who helped search for her showed up for the first day of the trial, some wearing the red Converse sneakers she loved. Sierra, Boyd said, had "no reason to abandon everything she knew, loved and cared about."

"We're all glad this day has finally come," Steve LaMar told reporters outside the courthouse. "We've waited a long time for it."

Opening statements wrapped up in a San Jose courtroom Tuesday. Prosecutor David Boyd continued his statement by rehashing two kidnapping attempts, which took place in the parking lots of two Morgan Hill Safeway stores, including the Tennant Avenue location where Garcia-Torres worked as a courtesy clerk.

A stun gun that was collected as evidence in one of the attempts contained a nine-volt Duracell battery marked by Garcia-Torres' left thumbprint, Boyd said.

Records connected to Garcia-Torres' sister's Safeway Club Card, which Boyd said the defendant used regularly at that time, list a purchase of the same nine-volt Duracell batteries hours before the kidnapping attempt.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Al Lopez told jurors that Garcia-Torres' then-manager at Safeway would testify at a later date that those batteries were too heavy for their packaging and often broke it open.

Garcia-Torres could have left a thumbprint on one of them if he had picked up an open pack of batteries at the register, which, Lopez said, he could have had reason to do as a courtesy clerk.

Lopez went on to attack the arguments made by prosecutors regarding physical evidence collected from Garcia-Torres' distinctive 1998 Volkswagen Jetta and Sierra's backpack.

The black and gray polyester fibers found on Sierra's clothing that Boyd described as indistinguishable from those found on the after-market floor mats in the Jetta are generic and can be found on any number of
products, Lopez argued.

The tiny reflective glass beads from the road found on Sierra's clothing were not found in Garcia-Torres' Jetta, Lopez said.

Prosecutors have said that Garcia-Torres, described as an avid outdoorsman, had the outdoor knowledge to hide Sierra's body in any number of remote locations. "If she's taken somewhere in the wilderness, where did the glass beads come from?" Lopez asked.

Safeway Club Card records show that Garcia-Torres purchased a jug of bleach and a turkey baster three days before Sierra disappeared, items that Boyd suggested the defendant bought to break down DNA evidence of a
sexual assault.

Lopez pulled out a turkey baster and, using coffee filters and a rubber band, showed the jury how it could be used to manufacture concentrated marijuana hash oil.

As for the bleach, Lopez said, there was "nothing sinister about buying a gallon of bleach to get your socks white."

Perhaps most significantly, Lopez argued that DNA evidence had been cross-contaminated during the collection process. Sierra's hair, for example, was not found on the rope from the trunk of Garcia-Torres' Jetta until months after being collected.

Unlike fingerprints, DNA can be transferred, and some of the evidence presented by the prosecution was inconclusive. "The complete picture is this is not gold-standard DNA. It's background DNA," Lopez said. "What they're presenting to you is not reliable. It doesn't prove who, how or when."

Garcia-Torres smirked and laughed quietly to himself when Boyd played a video of his April 2012 interview with investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, in which a sergeant explains the spread of DNA evidence with a reference to a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial.

In that interview, the sergeant asks Garcia-Torres how his DNA may have been found on Sierra's clothing, which was found covered in dirt stains and a strong odor of human urine three days after her disappearance.

"I like masturbating, so, ha, that's it," a 21-year-old Garcia-Torres says in the video, explaining that he kept tissue or toilet paper in his car for this purpose and that his DNA would have been carried on the tissue wherever he disposed of it outside.

Boyd pointed out that prior to this, neither sergeant raises the subject of anything sexual or suggests that ejaculate was found on Sierra's jeans.

Lopez warned jurors about "shaming evidence" provided to distract and create bias against the defendant without proving the defendant's culpability in crimes as charged.

"You're not going to hear any evidence that she was killed," Lopez said. "Absolutely none."

By Bay City News