As 1995 Closes, a Few Murder Mysteries Remain : Crime: Ventura County has had 31 killings this year, slightly more than average. A handful of those cases still baffle authorities.

A transvestite’s body riddled with bullets. A well-dressed, middle-aged woman lying strangled in a southeast Oxnard ditch. Two buddies shot to death in sleepy Piru.

These cases keep detectives wondering at night, the murders of 1995 that remain unsolved.

The year was a slightly above-average one for murder in Ventura County: Since Jan. 1, 31 residents have been found shot, strangled, stabbed, starved and otherwise deprived of life.

That is three more than last year’s 28 slayings, but 16 fewer murders than in unusually violent 1993.

For the most part, police succeeded in running the killers to the ground, assembling evidence and giving the district attorney suspects ready for trial.

But a nagging few cases remain open. Evidence was too thin to take to trial yet. Eyewitnesses lied or told conflicting stories. Some clammed up.

And some murders occurred with only two witnesses present, neither of whom will talk: the killer and the victim.

Cops work unsolved murders doggedly, sometimes to the point of retirement. Then, reluctantly, they hand off cases they never solved to younger, fresher detectives, hoping the killer will eventually be nailed.

Cases like these “never go away, especially in the homicide arena,” said Oxnard Police Sgt. Clifton Troy.

“Even though we may not be working [a case] today, they never get put to bed,” said Troy, head of his department’s major crimes division. “You never know when some little tidbit’s going to come up to move the case along.”

The oldest unsolved 1995 murder claimed the life of Reynaldo Sandoval, a.k.a. Reyna.

Sandoval, 35, was well-known to police and the people of Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood, a man who dressed in women’s clothing and often was referred to as “she” or “her.”

“For all intents and purposes, he was living as a female,” Troy said.

Friends recalled Sandoval as a friendly person who loved children, someone with whom “no one had any problems.”

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On Feb. 26, Troy said, Sandoval and his roommate were walking down the street near their home when a group of men attacked them and shot Sandoval in the chest and head.

Police found his body in the gutter, still clad in spandex pants and a red woman’s top.

While police briefly suspected Sandoval’s roommate, Troy said, they later dismissed him because he had injuries that could have come from such an attack.

“We have nothing on that one. ‘A group of Hispanic males’ is all we have,” Troy said. “They don’t know who did it. . . . We’re starting to hear street rumblings that this is in retaliation for something involving Reyna in the past year and a half.”

Tipsters “leave little caveats on my voice mail,” Troy said. Problem is, he said, they don’t leave their names, phone numbers or solid leads.

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Next came a little Ojai boy with a cracked head.

Just 13 months old, David Ruiz was admitted to Ojai Valley Hospital on June 23 in critical condition with a fractured skull. The boy’s adult sister and legal guardian, Clara Ramos, and her husband brought him in.

The next day, David was transferred to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, where he died from bleeding inside his head.

David’s 12-year-old sister told investigators she had seen the baby fall from a chair to the carpet headfirst. But the autopsy revealed the head injury was more severe than such a fall could cause. And the coroner’s office discovered evidence of possible prior child abuse, such as a fractured leg that had already healed by the time he died.

“We’re still investigating that as a possible homicide,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Robertson.

“As I recall, the child was taken away from the natural mother, and the baby had had multiple foster parents and ultimately wound up with legal custody being given to the child’s sister,” he said. “There were so many people that had had control over the child in such a short period of time that it made it difficult . . . to determine where the abuse began.”

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Two months later, sheriff’s detectives faced a different kind of whodunit, a case so mysterious it now carries a $15,000 reward.

It happened Aug. 29 in Piru, a quiet agricultural town that had not seen murder for many years: Two bursts of gunfire split the night in front of Piru Elementary School.

Moments later, police found Satnam Singh Sangha of British Columbia and Carlos Lopez, 39, of Santa Paula sprawled in the parking lot 100 feet apart, with fatal, large-caliber bullet wounds.

Sangha was killed where he stood, next to a red 1995 Chrysler LeBaron convertible he had rented in Oxnard. Lopez may have been chased to the spot where he fell, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Young.

The men had been friends for about a year, and Lopez had an arrest record for drug-related offenses, according to sheriff’s detectives. But there is little more known about who killed them and why.

“The leads haven’t dried up, they’re just coming in slowly is all,” Young said. “There are a number of theories, most popular of which seems to be it was a drug deal that went bad.”

But there were no drugs found in the car, no reports by eyewitnesses, and no gun found.

“It’s a tough one, it really is,” Young said.

Sheriff Larry Carpenter has offered a $15,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed Lopez and Sangha, Robertson said. Sheriff’s detectives are taking tips at (805) 639-9444.

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The next two unsolved murders of 1995 fit a pattern that is becoming all too familiar to police: gang-related slayings in Oxnard.

Martin Banuelos was not a gang member, his friends and family said. But the 16-year-old had quarreled with local gang members at Channel Islands High School.

On Sept. 28, he stood on the front porch of a friend’s home in Oxnard’s Lemonwood neighborhood. A red car pulled up. He began to argue with one of the passengers.

Then, witnesses said, someone fired at him several times. Two bullets struck him. Martin died less than an hour later. His killer is still at large.

Oxnard detectives are sorting through their leads, Troy said, and have narrowed the list of suspects to about six.

“The only thing about Martin’s homicide is we almost had too many witnesses,” he said. “Everybody had a different version. They were describing 18 brands of cars in five or six colors. . . . We just need that one person to come forward. We know there’s probably a witness out there who has talked to the shooter or knows who he is.”

But the shooter was probably a gang member, Troy said. And gang members often won’t snitch. They fear payback from rivals, static from homeboys, punishment from cops.

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So, Martin’s family has offered a $3,000 reward for information bringing the conviction of his killer.

“It’s unfortunately not going to come to a resolution as fast as [his] family would like it to,” Troy said. “But of the current [unsolved killings] we have, that one’s the most fruitful.”

Less fruitful are leads in the death of Pedro Madueno. Police believe he was a gang member killed by rivals.

Less than a block from his home on Paula Street, on Oct. 12, 16-year-old Pedro got into his last argument.

“Pedro and his friends were out on the street,” Troy said, “and a couple of guys came up and they exchanged words and he got shot four or five times.”

Once in the chest, witnesses said, and four times in the back as he fell. Said one, “Basically, he bled to death right there.”

The assailants jumped back into the car they had arrived in, Troy said, and the girl at the wheel sped off.

Leads are starting to develop on Pedro’s death, Troy said. But again, police are fighting the street gang code of silence.

Then there is 1995’s latest murder mystery: a middle-aged, well-kept, unidentified dead woman.

Police, medical examiners, forensics experts, state investigators and FBI technicians are all trying to pull clues from her body.

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Two surfers found her the morning of Dec. 22 as they trudged toward a remote beach at the northern edge of the Point Mugu naval base.

“She’s a Caucasian female, approximately 5 feet, 1 inch tall, estimated 130 to 145 pounds,” said Coroner’s Investigator Craig Stevens, reading the official description of this Jane Doe.

“She has strawberry-blond hair and freckles, brown eyes,” Stevens said. “She’s estimated to be 55 to 65 years old. Her shoe size is 8 1/2, her blouse is size 18, and her pants have a 44-inch waist. She was wearing four rings and three necklaces, including a small yellow metal watch on a chain around her neck.”

The surfers found her sprawled in a drainage ditch where Arnold Road dead-ends at the coast. She wore a print blouse and brown polyester slacks, nylon knee-high stockings and one tan sandal.

She had been bludgeoned and strangled less than 24 hours earlier, the coroner ruled. There was no apparent evidence of rape, but lab tests are still out.

“This one’s hard to get a feeling on why or who. It’s not a person you’d expect to be a homicide victim,” Troy said. “This is not the kind of person you’d expect to run into that kind of violence.”

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The woman’s description has been broadcast on the nationwide police computer network. The California Department of Justice is scanning missing-persons reports. The FBI is hand-searching fingerprint records for a match to the dead woman’s finely-ridged fingertips.

And Oxnard police and the county coroner are asking for any clues on the woman’s identity. Tips may be phoned in to Det. Mike Palmieri at 385-7688 or Det. Doug Wiley at 385-7604 at the Oxnard Police Department, or to the Ventura County coroner’s office at 652-5750.

With no reliable eyewitness accounts in homicides, there is nothing police can do but keep digging, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Young.

Leads have been slow in the Piru double slaying, but they still trickle in. And detectives keep checking them out.

“It’s not a dead case by any stretch of the imagination,” Young said. “I’ve been getting leads all the way through this thing, since September, and it’s just a matter of getting the good quality one I need.”

He added, “I’m sure there’s people who know what happened.”