HARD WORK TO GET RECOGNITION HONORS GOING TO THOSE WHO HELPED CLEAR '84 KILLING CASE.

Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer

BURBANK - When forensic specialist Celeste Patchett had some spare time in September 2003, she began culling through old unsolved homicide cases that had a lot of fingerprint evidence.

Opening a file on a 59-year-old busboy who was sexually assaulted and strangled after he left a local bar with two men on New Year's Eve 1984, Patchett saw about a dozen fingerprints lifted from the crime scene. She looked further and saw that suspects had been identified, but never charged with the murder.

New analysis linked two fingerprints to one of the original suspects. DNA evidence identified the second.

``I got lucky. Clearing a murder, it doesn't get any better than that,'' she said.

Patchett, a civilian employee, her civilian boss, Victoria Payson, Lt. Eric Rosoff, and Detectives Darin Ryburn and Ron Miller will be honored Tuesday with the department's Professional Esteem Award at a ceremony in front of the Burbank City Council.

They will be recognized for helping seal the convictions of two drifters and ex-cons, Marty McClure and Robert Gilbreth, in the slaying of busboy Tony Figueroa, 59.

``I'm really, really proud,'' said Burbank Police Chief Thomas Hoefel. ``Everybody deserves closure.''

On Jan. 3, 1984, police found Figueroa beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled in his ransacked Olive Grove Avenue apartment. Beer cans were scattered about. Figueroa's metal cane was snapped. Early on, police identified two suspects, but could not come up with enough evidence to link them to the crime.

Witnesses saw Figueroa with the men at a bar on New Year's Eve. They were seen leaving with him at the end of the night.

Police identified and interrogated McClure and Gilbreth shortly after the murder. Both admitted to being at the bar with Figueroa, but McClure said Gilbreth went into the apartment, while Gilbreth told police it was McClure who went inside. Police couldn't match fingerprints to the suspects.

The case went dormant for nearly 20 years. In September 2003, Patchett re-examined fingerprints, and compared them with Gilbreth's and McClure's. Two prints matched McClure's - one on a beer can and another on the refrigerator. Patchett also learned that investigators had collected biological evidence and stored it in a freezer in 1984. She ordered tests done at a lab, and DNA matched Gilbreth's, she said.

The inability of investigators 20 years ago to match the fingerprints was unfortunate, said Ryburn.

``The equipment has gotten better over the years,'' Ryburn said.

Ryburn and Miller were called and quickly found the men. Gilbreth, a convicted sex offender, was on parole in El Centro. McClure, a convicted robber and car thief, was in a California prison for violating his parole for an earlier conviction, Rosoff said.

In questioning that lasted 30 hours over several trips, the detectives said they caught the men in lies. Murder charges were filed in July 2004.

Gilbreth pleaded guilty in court and was sentenced in February to 11 years in state prison for voluntary manslaughter, police said. McClure wasn't the primary aggressor, police said, and as part of a plea deal was sentenced to two years in prison for residential burglary.

``Getting to go to report to the family 20 years later that we made arrests in their brother's murder was overwhelming,'' Rosoff said. ``It was a pretty satisfying event.''

Jason Kandel, [phone]

jason.kandel(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Lab work by forensic analyst Celeste Patchett gave Burbank police - including Detective Darin Ryburn, center, and Lt. Eric Rosoff - what they needed to make a case against the original suspects in a 1984 homicide case.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer