Expendable For A Cause.

This is an addition to the article covering the murder of Tsai-Lian Yu and I would refer you back to that original post for all the details on this case.  I am adding a little information we discovered during our visit to the Hall of Records in Los Angeles. Leafing through the first volume, we came across some information from the preliminary hearing that didn’t appear during the trial.
We found it interesting and worth sharing.

A Brief Re-Cap

The killing of Tsai-Lian was the only count commuted to the lesser charge of second-degree murder rather than first-degree; it could not be shown that her killing was done with intent and malice aforethought.  This is because of eyewitness testimonies; one described a “lovers’ quarrel”, and the other described a fight between the victim and the perpetrator.  

“Gallegos saw the man from the blue car lean into the window of the yellow car and try to pull the woman from her car. Gallegos thought they were having a lovers’ quarrel.”  (2008 Petition of Habeas Corpus, page 50)

The above is an embellishment on his original witness statement from Jorge Gallegos Calderon.  In the original statement, taken by Monterey Park Officer Dan Romero, Gallegos denied seeing a fight and said he would be unable to identify the suspect.

He later surprised the prosecution, defence and probably himself by suddenly and implausibly identifying Ramirez.
He was not the first (or last) eyewitness to change their story in court.
Joseph Dueñas, the second eyewitness, initially identified Ramirez at the 1986 preliminary hearing but later admitted he could not identify him and recanted his statement.
This is hardly surprising, as both had described a short-ish man of 5ft 7 to 5ft 8 with a possible Asian or Latino appearance. Ramirez was 6ft 1.

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A Lovers’ Quarrel?

Engaging in a lovers’ quarrel implies a relationship with the opposite party, although there is no suggestion that Tsai-Lian Yu had any connection to Richard Ramirez, let alone that they were lovers.  Yet the possibility must remain that Tsai-Lian knew her killer if we are to believe the testimonies that Yu was holding on to her attacker as he told her, ” Get away from me!”.  

Tsai-Lian Yu did have a boyfriend, although nothing about him is known, not his name, height, or ethnicity. Was he also Asian? We don’t know.
Officer Anthony Romero of the Monterey Park Police (there were two Officers named Romero, Dan and Anthony) did the initial investigations before the case was taken over by Gil Carrillo and the task force.  Romero testified that Tsai-Lian had wanted to marry her boyfriend, but he did not want to marry her.

For clarity I will transcribe below:

“ Officer Anthony Romero testified that this victim, Ms Yu, wanted to marry her boyfriend but he did not want to marry her.”  Taken from the recorded transcript from the preliminary hearing, dated 18th March 1986. 

This snippet was amongst the pile of case volumes and is something that we have never seen mentioned before.

For whatever reason, the boyfriend doesn’t seem to have been interviewed at all. Perhaps he was out of town, giving him a cast-iron alibi. Nonetheless, one would still expect that a boyfriend would have been questioned, especially as there was the suggestion of conflict between them. No, I am not saying that this unknown boyfriend killed Tsai-Lian, yet it is evident that the court was determined that the defence should not be allowed to raise the subject of Yu’s relationships with men.   

Halpin Objects

Richard’s defence suggested an ex-boyfriend might have been her killer, which was totally acceptable, given that they had heard two testimonies describing lovers’ arguments and fights in the street.  Halpin objected, saying that Yu’s boyfriends were “irrelevant”, which sounds ludicrous, as his own witnesses were the ones to mention lovers in the first place.
Judge Tynan sustained, and so Richard’s defence team were never allowed to question Yu’s friend, Jean Wang, about the conflict with the boyfriend or anything at all.  Her genuine and actual relationships were deemed to be null and void, banished into the ether as the case was brought under the umbrella of Carrillo’s ‘fear fetish’ theory.  A theory that falls at the third murder ascribed to the Night Stalker in 1985.

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Joinders

The Yu incident was a non-capital homicide charge that was elevated to a death penalty one by the prosecution’s usage of joinders, whereby cases with more robust looking evidence were linked to those with weaker.

“In closing argument, the prosecution urged the jury to find Petitioner guilty of first degree murder in the Yu incident based on a theory of deliberate and premeditated killing with malice aforethought. In rebuttal argument, the prosecution stated that Petitioner’s denial of involvement in the Yu shooting abrogated the jury’s need to consider any of the manslaughter instructions. The jury returned a verdict of second-degree murder.” 2008 Petition of Habeas Corpus, page 626

At no stage did the prosecution attempt to prove a link between Tsai-Lian Yu and Richard Ramirez. The conviction rested on the tenuous coupling of a flawed ballistics report and unreliable eyewitnesses, both of whom should have been impeached.

“Gallegos admitted he told the investigating officers that he could not identify the man and that his description was quite different to the defendant’s actual appearance.”   Recorded transcript, preliminary hearing, 18th March 1986.

The visit to the Hall of Records and reading the case files corroborated what we had already said.  It also raised more questions that should have been answered nearly 40 years ago. 

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