‘We need this to be over.’ Last killer sentenced in brutal Merced County double murder
Esperanza Aguirre sat in a Merced courtroom Thursday, as the last man responsible for killing her husband Rudolpho Barona was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The hearing for killer Monico Pena, convicted of first degree murder charges by a jury in November, likely signals the final legal chapter in the grisly 2014 killings of Barona, who was from Sacramento, and Reyes Garcia Barona of Atwater.
For Aguirre and the victims’ families, the past eight years has been a long road of many tears — and endless grieving.
“This person doesn’t know the damage he did to my children,” Aguirre lamented, through a Spanish interpreter.
“In spite of the time that has passed, my children ask about their father. They suffer bullying in school due to that. I’m grateful and thankful this person won’t be on the street.”
Meanwhile Adolfa Valencia, one of Reyes Garcia Barona’s relatives, told the court when she lost her father to throat cancer, she told her grandfather she wasn’t sure she could handle the pain of her father’s death.
Her grandfather, she said, told her that it was better to lose a family member to illness than to an act of violence.
“In that moment, those words didn’t resonate so much,” Valencia said. “But in 2014, after what happened with Reyes, those words continue (to resonate) every day. This is harder. We’ll get through this, but we need this to be over.”
Crimes tied to drugs, cartels
Pena was one of several people arrested and charged in the killings, and the last to be tried and convicted.
The crimes committed by Pena and the others made headlines after the victims’ charred bodies were found inside a burned car on Oct. 20, 2014 off East Monte Vista Avenue, not far from Denair.
The four counts jurors convicted Pena on also included kidnapping. Prosecutors said the murders stemmed from a dispute over a large amount of marijuana. The killings were thought to be tied to a Mexican drug cartel.
It’s believed Pena was responsible for Garcia Barona’s death by beating him with a baseball bat.
Prosecutors believe the two victims were kidnapped and held for two days in homes in Atwater and Winton while bound with duct tape before they were taken to an orchard, where they were murdered.
The killers then torched the car using diesel fuel before abandoning the bodies, according to Merced County Sheriff’s detectives.
More than 150 pounds of marijuana, $4,000 in cash and several guns were seized during the investigation from a house in the 6800 block of California Street in Winton.
The other defendants in the case included Heliodora Silva Arreola and Gerardo A. Silva, who were both tried and convicted on the murder charges.
Salvador Silva, while convicted of kidnapping, took a plea deal in exchange for his testimony and avoided prosecution on his murder charges.
Bernardo Rangel and Salvador Pena both pleaded no contest to their charges and were each sentenced to 13 years in prison, according to prosecutor Matthew Serratto.