Alfredo Prieto

Alfredo Prieto
Born	Alfredo Rolando Prieto (1965-11-18)November 18, 1965 San Martín, El Salvador
Died	October 1, 2015(2015-10-01) (aged 49) Greensville Correctional Center, Jarratt, Virginia, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Criminal status	Executed
Conviction(s)	Capital murder x3 Attempted murder Kidnapping Rape Robbery
Criminal penalty	Death (California and Virginia)
Details
Victims	9 (3 convictions)
Span of crimes	1988–1990
Country	United States
State(s)	Virginia, California
Date apprehended	September 6, 1990

Alfredo Rolando Prieto (November 18, 1965 – October 1, 2015) was a Salvadoran-American serial killer. After being initially convicted for a single murder, he would later be connected to eight other murders committed in Virginia and California between May 1988 and September 1990 via DNA profiling. Sentenced to death in both states, Prieto was executed by lethal injection in Virginia in 2015.^[1]

Biography[]

Alfredo Prieto was born on November 18, 1965, in San Martín, El Salvador to parents Arnoldo and Teodora Prieto, who had five other children. He spent his childhood and adolescence in poverty, since during the Football War, his parents, like most of the country's inhabitants, experienced heavy financial difficulties. Arnoldo proved to be a violent individual who beat Prieto's mother, causing her to leave El Salvador in 1975 and emigrate to the United States. During the outbreak of the Salvadoran Civil War, Alfredo witnessed many civilians being killed, including his grandfather, who was killed in front of him by partisans. The death of a loved one greatly influenced Prieto, as well as his brothers and sisters, due to which he would subsequently be diagnosed with PTSD. In 1981, his mother returned to El Salvador and took the children with her to the USA, settling the family in Pomona, California, where Alfredo and his siblings attended the Pomona High School. During his highschool years, Prieto became addicted to drugs and alcohol. Around this time, he and his brother Guillermo met Sandra Figueroa, whose brothers were members of a local street gang named "456 Island Piru". To gain her attention, Alfredo, under the patronage of her brother, also joined the gang, after which he became romantically entangled with Figueroa. Now a gang member, Prieto dropped out of school and married her. The couple had their child in 1984, but the marriage did not work out. In August 1984, Prieto attacked three people in Ontario by shooting them with a pistol in the street from the inside of his car, wounding Elias Vera, Mario Naranjo and Mercedes Salazar. After his arrest, Prieto claimed that he was enacting revenge after learning that his wife supposedly cheated on him with Naranjo. His wife, in turn, claimed that after the wedding and the birth of their daughter, he subjected her to constant sexual abuse and aggression, like his newborn daughter, but Alfredo vehemently denied this. His brother and relatives also defended him, testifying that they had not noticed Alfredo being aggressive towards his daughter and that he took good care of her.^[2] In late 1984, he was found guilty and convicted, but since his victims were also gang members, the court showed leniency to him. He received a minor sentence and was released in 1987, after which he left California and moved to Virginia. He settled in Arlington, where his father had also moved to after emigrating to the USA after serving a murder conviction in El Salvador. Once in Arlington, Alfredo found a job and met another girl, who later bore him a son. At the end of 1989, his father was arrested for raping a woman and was jailed. After that, in February 1990, Prieto left the state and moved back to California.^[3][4]

Murder of Yvette Woodruff[]

Early in the morning of September 2, 1990, Prieto, along with 29-year-old Vincent Lopez and 33-year-old Danny Sorian, robbed Anthony Rangela in Ontario. They then took him hostage and drove to his house, where Rangela lived with his 33-year-old aunt Emily D., her 17-year-old daughter Lisa H. and Lisa's friend, 15-year-old Yvette Woodruff. Threatening the girls with a knife, the criminals took their money and keys from the ignition, and then forced them to sit in the back seat of the car. They then drove to the outskirts of the city, but along the way, Lopez began arguing with Prieto and Sorian, refusing to participate any further and eventually leaving the car. He was then replaced by another friend of Prieto's, Ricardo Estrada, whom they came across while buying gasoline at a gas station. In the end, they took the girls to an industrial zone on the eastern outskirts of the city, where in one of the abandoned buildings, they raped each of the girls under the threat of a gun. After raping them, Prieto shot and killed Woodruff, while Sorian and Estrada stabbed Emily D. and Lisa H. many times with a knife, promptly leaving the scene. Despite severe injuries and extensive blood loss, Emily D. and Lisa H. survived and managed to reach a pay phone, after which they called the police. They were taken to the hospital, where they testified about the circumstances of the incident. On that same day, the police found Woodruff's body, and a few days later, the car which the criminals had used and later left at the crime scene.^[5]

Prieto and his accomplices failed in evading the police for long, as street informants soon learned about the crime and contacted the authorities. Using the information provided, the police swiftly arrested Prieto and the others involved between September 6-22, 1990. On September 6, Alfredo himself was arrested at his home without incident. While searching his apartment, a pistol belonging to the victims was seized, which was later determined to be the murder weapon in the Woodruff killing.^[6][7]

Trial and exposure[]

Prieto was later charged with first degree murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery. By jury verdict, he was found guilty on January 21, 1992 on all charges, receiving the death sentence. Twelve days later, he was transferred to San Quentin State Prison, where he would spend the next 14 years awaiting execution on death row.

In 2005, a law was passed obligating all convicts in the state to submit their DNA, resulting in Prieto's DNA being entered into the national database.^[8]

In early 2006, Prieto's DNA was matched to eight more murders committed between 1988 and 1990: the May 11, 1988 rape and shooting of 24-year-old Veronica "Tina" Lynn Jefferson in Arlington, and later the December 6th attack on 22-year-old Rachael Raver and her 22-year-old fiancé Warren Fulton in Reston, both of whom were shot after Prieto raped Raver. The next linked killing was to the September 2, 1989 shooting of 27-year-old Manuel Sermeno, who was killed in Prince William County near the I-95. His car, with his corpse inside, was later set on fire. On May 5, 1990, Prieto committed another double murder, killing 19-year-old Stacey Siegrist and her 21-year-old fiancé Tony Gianuzzi in Rubidoux, California, with Siegrist being sexually assaulted before being shot. On June 2, 1990, Prieto shot and killed Lula Mae Farley in an alley behind an Ontario supermarket where she and her husband were collecting recyclables, according to 1990 news coverage. After witnessing the murder of his wife, Herbert Farley was then abducted and later found shot to death in Rubidoux. Another individual, 19-year-old Steven Valdez, was arrested as a suspect in these killings, but later released. Following these revelations, the Fairfax County Attorney's Office brought a number of charges against Alfredo Prieto, resulting in his extradition from San Quentin on April 28, 2006 to Virginia, where he was due to stand trial.^[9][10]

The trial began in 2007, with Prieto's choosing the renowned lawyers Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro. However, he was found guilty by jury verdict for the Raver-Fulton murders, receiving a second death sentence. After the conviction, one of the jurors stated that the end of the sentencing stage, he had been pressured into voting for the death penalty by the prosecutor's office, despite his reservations about it. He also noted that the imposition about such a severe punishment was influenced by the information about Prieto's California convictions, which contradicted the principles of presumption of innocence. Ultimately, Prieto's lawyers filed an appeal, which was upheld, overturning his sentence and ordering a new trial to be held. However, he was found guilty and sentenced to death anew. A year later, his lawyers filed another appeal to overturn his sentence and asking for a new trial, based on the results from a psychiatric exam which determined that their client was intellectually disabled, with an IQ threshold between 67 and 73. Their decision was accepted, but at the third trial, the prosecutor's office proved to the court that Prieto had been a successful student at school in both El Salvador and the United States, and that when he found himself studying in Pomona, he had adapted socially, had perfectly learned the English language, was popular and effortlessly obtained a driver's license in both Virginia and California, which contradicted the notions of an intellectual disability. In the end, he was sentenced to death for a third and final time in 2010.^[11][12]

Execution[]

On October 1, 2015, Alfredo Prieto was executed by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center at 9:17 PM, in the presence of his relatives and some of the victims' family members. Shortly before his execution, his lawyers filed a lawsuit to delay the execution date on the grounds that drugs used for the process were unsafe. They demanded information about the shelf life of pentobarbital, which the state had received from Texas in exchange for another sedative, midazolam, which had expired. Among other things, his lawyers sought to force the state to disclose the name of the pharmaceutical company producing the drug in order to determine its quality so they could prevent the physical torture of their client during the execution, but this suit was dismissed.^[13]

See also[]

• List of people executed in the United States in 2015
• List of people executed in Virginia
• List of serial killers in the United States
• Kelvin Malone, another man sentenced to death in California who was executed in a different state

References[]

External links[]

• The People v. Prieto
• Prieto v. Zook
• Prieto v. Davis
• Execution Summary