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Trial begins for man accused of decades-old Santa Ana slaying of roommate

April 12, 2023

Decades after a man was found stabbed to death in a Santa Ana home, opening statements Wednesday in the murder trial of a former roommate tied to the case through forensic evidence focused on whether the slaying was part of a robbery turned deadly or an act of self-defense.

Edgar Ortega Cervantes, now 52, is facing a first-degree murder charge, along with a use of a deadly weapon enhancement, for the June 27, 1996 killing of 24-year-old Julio Franco in a home in the 500 block of South Spruce Street. Cervantes left the country immediately after Franco’s death, authorities say, but was identified as the suspected killer more than a decade later before being arrested in Mexico and extradited back to the United States to stand trial.

As his trial began in a Santa Ana courtroom on Wednesday morning, Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt told a Superior Court jury that Cervantes killed Franco while trying to rob him in the home the two men shared with many other occupants. Senior Deputy Public Defender Alisha Montoro countered that Franco was the one who attacked Cervantes in his own room, forcing Cervantes to act in self-defense.

Another roommate discovered Franco’s body in a bathtub, his face down and his legs up against the wall, leaving a pool of blood emptying into the drain. Officers found blood drops and stains throughout the home, as well as a buck knife and bloody shirt near the entrance to a crawl space outside the residence.

Cervantes — who was among many men living at the home while working odd jobs — was gone by the time officers arrived, the prosecutor said, leaving his belongings behind.

“He leaves the day of the murder and never returns, never,” Hunt told jurors.

It wasn’t until a Santa Ana Police Department cold-case task force re-opened the investigation in 2008 that DNA testing was conducted of the surviving evidence. Both Cervantes and Franco’s DNA were found on the buck knife, the prosecutor said, and Cervantes DNA was also found on the bloody shirt discovered outside the home.

A woman who had been living with Cervantes at the Santa Ana home along with the couple’s young baby until days before Franco’s death later told police that Cervantes had met up with her in Mexico after the slaying and told her that he killed Franco while trying to rob him, the prosecutor said.

Montoro said Franco, who owned a truck, was known to other people living at the home as “the junk man,” and was considered suspicious and strange. Montoro noted that the shirt police found with Cervantes’ blood on it was ripped and torn and that his room had been “trashed,” which the defense attorney described as evidence that Cervantes had been attacked and forced to defend himself in his bedroom.

“Franco, the junk man, had no business in his room,” Montoro said, noting that when detectives eventually spoke to Cervantes he told them that “in 1996 I did a bad thing but it was in self-defense.”

Montoro described the initial detectives as conducting a poor investigation that focused on taking some pictures and collecting some blood without focusing on DNA or interviewing many of the people who lived at the home.

Montoro also alleged that the woman who told police that Cervantes had described the killing as taking part during a robbery was estranged from Cervantes by the time she spoke to investigators and had already been tipped off by someone else that detectives believed Cervantes had killed Franco. As a result, the defense attorney said, the woman told police exactly what she thought they wanted to hear.

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Trial begins for man accused of decades-old Santa Ana slaying of roommate

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