Ventura Man Held in 1993 Slaying

Authorities arrested a 39-year-old Ventura man on suspicion of murder Wednesday after confronting him with DNA evidence that they said proved he strangled a woman in her Port Hueneme apartment more than a decade ago.

Ventura County district attorney investigators arrested Warren Patrick Mackey, a friend of the victim, at their office after he agreed to look over photographs to help solve the case.

Investigators confronted Mackey with evidence that he strangled 32-year-old Norma Rodriguez in her living room while her 4-year-old son was in the apartment. Authorities said Mackey adamantly denied the accusations, but was taken into custody.

“We have absolutely overwhelming DNA evidence,” said investigator Dennis Fitzgerald, a former Port Hueneme police officer who worked the Rodriguez case off and on for 10 years.

“It is very satisfying, especially for the family’s sake, and her sake, that it has come to this point,” Fitzgerald said. “It has been a long time coming.”

Mackey, who worked with Rodriguez at an Oxnard Kmart store, is expected to be arraigned today on one count of murder. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail at the Ventura County Jail.

The arrest culminates a joint effort by district attorney investigators and detectives with the Port Hueneme Police Department, who spent years re-interviewing witnesses and pursuing leads, authorities said.

The FBI assisted by reviewing reports and examining crime scene photographs, and an expert with the bureau developed a profile of the killer.

The break came last year when evidence collected at the crime scene and stored for nine years was submitted to the sheriff’s crime lab for DNA analysis, and a profile of the killer was obtained, authorities said.

Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Simon said evidence included unspecified items that could not have been subjected to DNA testing a decade ago but were analyzed after the technology became available.

“We obtained DNA samples from a number of suspects,” said Simon, who has worked the case for four years. The result was a match to Mackey, one of several friends of the victim who had voluntarily provided a DNA sample to investigators, sources said.

Authorities declined to offer a motive for the killing. They described Mackey and Rodriguez as friends and former co-workers, who were not romantically involved. Court records indicate that Mackey has no prior criminal record in Ventura County.

Fitzgerald said Rodriguez’s family members, including her former husband and their sons, now ages 14 and 21, were notified this week that an arrest was imminent.

Rodriguez, a mother of two boys who lived in a duplex in the 100 block of East B Street, was found dead in her living room the morning of June 1, 1993.

Anthony Rodriguez, then 33 and separated from his wife, and his brother, Hector, kicked in the door after failing to get a response when they arrived after Memorial Day weekend to pick up Rodriguez’s youngest son, authorities said.

Law enforcement officials suspect the killer had strangled Norma Rodriguez two days earlier. The boy was unharmed.

The homicide was the first of three slayings to rock Port Hueneme during the summer of 1993. All three victims were women who lived alone in townhouses or apartments, but the comparisons ended there.

Confronted with starkly different crime scenes, detectives suspected they were dealing with three killers.

Two years ago, police and investigators with the district attorney’s office unraveled one of those cases after a tipster led them to state inmate Michael Schultz, whose DNA profile was matched to semen found on strangled rape victim Cynthia Burger, 44. Schultz, 34, was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death.

The second slaying, the June 27 stabbing death of 87-year-old Beatrice Bellis at a seniors complex, remains unsolved.

From the start, detectives pursuing Rodriguez’s killer had little to work with. There was no sexual assault, no burglary and no forced entry to the duplex.

Described as a devoted mother and quiet neighbor, Rodriguez was not the type of person who would have taken risks that would have left her vulnerable to attack, authorities said. As a result, detectives suspected her killer was an acquaintance.

Port Hueneme Police Sgt. Ted Snyder, who oversees investigations for the department, said detectives never gave up.

“We just have the philosophy that we don’t have dead homicide cases, we just have unsolved homicide cases that we continue to work,” he said, giving credit to detectives who collected hundreds of pieces of evidence that became relevant years later. “Basically, the technology was able to take over the evidence that we had.”