Shadow Hills : Memories, Mystery Linger after Slaying

The roses and birds of paradise that Virginia Hernandez planted around her Shadow Hills home are long gone, but her family remains.

“We walk in and out of that house because we refuse to give up on each other,” said Susan Romero, a daughter of Hernandez, who was killed in November 1994 by an unknown assailant.

The 62-year-old housewife was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head just inside the door of her isolated Johanna Avenue home in Shadow Hills.

For her eight children and her husband, the baffling nature of her unsolved murder made 1995 a painful year.

The family still gathers most Saturdays at her house.

Holidays were always special for family members who looked forward to the meals cooked by Hernandez.

But this year, “Thanksgiving was nothing,” her son, Ramon Hernandez, said. “It doesn’t even feel like Christmas is here. It’s just another day for me.” Police have found no motive for the killing that they say apparently happened just after Hernandez opened the door. There was no sign of robbery.

“I wish we could find who did that,” said Det. Patty Ferguson of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division.

In March, the Los Angeles City Council announced a $25,000 reward that was matched by the family. Although the city reward expired after 30 days, the family’s is still being offered. In July, police released a composite drawing of a man who visited the home twice on the day of the murder.

The Latino man in his early 20s with a medium build and clean-cut black hair first came to the house asking for directions to a neighbor’s house, the family said. He later returned and asked to borrow a pencil. Family members believe he might be the killer, but police say they merely want to question him.

The composite was published in newspapers and the family put up posters throughout the city. Ferguson received a lot of phone calls, but the leads went nowhere.

“All I want is this person found,” said Romero, a Palmdale resident. Anyone with information on the case should call Ferguson at (818) 834-3113.