HUNTING FUGITIVES WHO RUN ABROAD; NATIONS WORK TOGETHER TO FIND L.A. CRIMINALS.

Byline: Theresa Moreau Daily News Staff Writer

Fresh from a shower, with only a towel draped around her body, 27-year-old Alejandrina Guevera Lopez stepped out of the bathroom to find her former lover standing in the living room of her Van Nuys apartment.

Jose Herminio Carmona, then 37 years old, demanded that Lopez return to the Los Angeles apartment the two had previously shared and leave her new home on Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys.

When she refused, Carmona pulled her out of the apartment and dragged her down the hallway, but Lopez broke free, ran back inside her home and locked the door behind her.

Carmona kicked down the door, cornered his former fiancee in the kitchen, shot her once, then shot her again when she hit the floor.

Carmona fled from Lopez's home on that September afternoon in 1992.

Then he fled the country.

However, a team of dogged investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department's foreign prosecution unit hunted Carmona down and tracked him to his native homeland of Honduras.

Nine months after Lopez's killing, LAPD officers presented the case to Honduran officials and pointed to Carmona's location.

Following a concerted effort between Honduran and American law enforcement agencies, Honduran authorities arrested Carmona, prosecuted him and found him guilty in the shooting death of Lopez.

Carmona is behind bars - in Honduras - for a murder committed 2,300 miles and three borders away.

13 percent flee country

Of all murders, rapes and other violent crimes committed in the city of Los Angeles, police say that typically some 13 percent are the work of criminals who flee the country.

Since 1985 - when the foreign prosecution unit was formed - investigators have filed more than 175 cases with Mexican officials alone. And out of those 175, the federales have made approximately 90 arrests, said Los Angeles police Lt. Bruce Meyer, who heads the department's Fugitive Warrant Section.

``Those guys are a godsend, because they're fluent in Spanish and they know the inner workings of foreign bureaucracies - that's needed to expedite things,'' said Los Angeles police Detective James Rahm of the Van Nuys Division's homicide unit, who was the original investigator on the Carmona case.

Investigators claim that the massive migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States in the last 10 years is one reason for the unit to focus nearly exclusively on those nations.

Last year, LAPD detectives flew to Mexico and Central America to lodge arrest complaints for 11 murders, an attempted murder, and three narcotics and fraud cases.

In 1995, they worked with foreign authorities to prosecute 19 murder suspects, two accused kidnappers and a rape suspect.

The partnership is necessary; American police have no legal authority once they cross the border. They can't even carry a gun.

Jorge Garcia-Villalobos, legal attache for the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, works jointly with the LAPD's Fugitive Warrant Section to aid in the capture, prosecution and incarceration of criminals who cross the border for what they believe is freedom.

``We have to respect the law of each country, the sovereignty, the people - but as well, we have to enforce the law,'' Garcia-Villalobos said.

``We have to bring justice to the victims' relatives, we have to show justice, and the law has to be applied equally and without any lenience of territory.''

Fight escalated

Investigators believe that Baldomero Banuelos Barrientos is one of those murder suspects who have attempted to flee justice.

In the fifth-floor office where the Fugitive Warrant Section is headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, Detective Fernando Gonzalez leans forward and opens a manila file, the first half in Spanish, his translation, the second half in English, the original text compiled by the initial investigating detectives.

Peeling back the first sheet of onion skin, the file underneath documents an early morning argument in October 1993 between an unemployed Barrientos, then 42, and his live-in companion 37-year-old Marina Herrera, who worked as a beautician.

The documents indicate that what began as a disagreement between the two dragged on for hours as Barrientos and Herrera fought in the North Hollywood home they shared in the 10900 block of Lemay Street, finally ending in a brutal murder.

After the couple's two children - a 10-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter - left for school, Barrientos grabbed a butcher's knife and repeatedly stabbed Herrera, investigators say, puncturing her skull several times.

Barrientos had already served two months in Los Angeles County jail the year before for domestic abuse. He had stuck the barrel of a gun into Herrera's mouth and threatened to pull the trigger, police said.

This time, Barrientos didn't wait around for police. Investigators believe that he fled to Jerez, in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, where he still lives.

At the time of Herrera's murder, there was a restraining order filed against Barrientos, even though the two lived together, police said.

``We want that guy bad. What he did to his wife was horrible,'' said Los Angeles police Detective Mike Coffey, North Hollywood Division's homicide unit.

And because of treaties and agreements between the United States, Mexico and Central American countries, foreign nationals like Barrientos can face prosecution in their homelands.

American citizens who flee from crimes committed on American soil are subject to extradition, but countries south of the border reserve the right to try their own nationals.

For example, Article IV of the federal Mexican Penal Code, enacted in 1871, outlines prosecution of a national if the crime committed in a foreign country by a Mexican national is: against a Mexican national, is by a Mexican national against a citizen of a foreign country, or is by a citizen of a foreign country against a Mexican national.

Another agreement, the Extradition Treaty between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, enacted in 1980, spells out for which crimes the respective countries will surrender people, said Barbara J. Moore, chief of the extradition services section of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

But Moore has never had to resort to enforcing extradition measures.

``I've never extradited anybody from Mexico. We haven't had to,'' said Moore, who's worked in the unit since 1976. ``Mexico wouldn't give up their nationals, and the Americans they kicked over (the border) for us because they don't want undesirables.''

A third agreement, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, enacted in 1987, allows both Mexico and the United States to ask for assistance in obtaining documents such as birth certificates, criminal records, photos and death certificates, which would be pertinent to an investigation, said Enrique Mercado, special agent supervisor for the California Department of Justice's foreign prosecution unit based in San Diego.

Palmdale man killed

Two suspects that Gonzalez would like to take into custody are Ramon Reyes and Louie Jose Velarde Jr., in the killing of a Coca-Cola distributor making his delivery to a grocery store in Van Nuys.

In between stops, Robert Joseph Ward, 28, of Palmdale had just finished his delivery at a store on the corner of Woodman Avenue and Sherman Way, and placed his ritual morning telephone call to his fiancee on that October day in 1992.

Someone behind Ward demanded that he hang up.

Unaware that an armed robber barked the order, Ward signaled he'd be off the phone in ``just a minute.''

But not soon enough to suit the assailant, who then fired several rounds, point blank, into the victim, police said.

Ward's fiancee listened on the other end of the phone as it dangled by its cord.

Detectives believe Reyes, 30, and Louie Jose Velarde Jr., 33, are responsible for the slaying and that the two fugitives now live in Mexico.

``We'd love to catch these guys,'' Gonzalez said. ``I want 'em. I want 'em all.''

Hard time below border

Catch suspects, prosecute them, then toss them into prisons below the border - prisons that make California penitentiaries seem like Club Med, police said.

Wet in the winter, they sizzle in the summer.

Although investigators could provide no figures on the rate of convictions outside of the United States, they noted that people convicted across the border can be guaranteed to serve hard time.

``They don't have the death penalty, but when they say 25 years, you get 25 years, and you don't get time off for good behavior,'' said Rahm, of the Van Nuys bureau.

``We want justice to be served - the guy found and incarcerated,'' said Los Angeles police Officer Philip Dudley, one of six investigators in the Foreign Prosecution Liaison unit.

Before a prosecution is set in motion on foreign soil, the LAPD must determine that the suspect has fled from Los Angeles. Then, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office must agree to waive prosecution of the case in the United States - a measure of precaution against double jeopardy.

After translating from English to Spanish the original case book, complete with police report and an arrest warrant, the officers present their completed files to Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson.

It's up to him to decide whether the case should be brought to trial in another country.

Once Los Angeles officers travel to the country and file the case with authorities there, they return to wait, sometimes days and sometimes years.

And then there is the case of Milburgo Zagal Flores.

More than four years ago, a group of partygoers discovered the body of their friend Raul Perez Rojas, 29, of Los Angeles, slumped lifeless on the ground behind an apartment complex in the 7300 block of Valmont Avenue in Sunland.

Only moments before, as the music blared and revelers kicked back the beers, witnesses saw tempers flare up between two men - Flores picked a fight with Rojas, then shot him to death, police said.

Police believe Flores, now 33, lives as a fugitive in Mexico City.

Anyone with information about any of the above suspects - Baldomero Banuelos Barrientos, Ramon Reyes, Louie Jose Velarde Jr. or Milburgo Zagal Flores - is encouraged to telephone police at [phone].

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4 Photos

PHOTO Fugitives thought to be in Mexico

(1) Baldomero Banuelos Barrientos

(2) Milburgo Zagal Flores

(3) Ramon Reyes

(4) Louis Jose Velarde Jr.