Court documents reveal what grand jury heard in Modesto triple homicide

Prosecutors believe members of a Modesto street gang regiment were following their leader’s orders when they shot to death three people inside their home last year, according to filed court documents in a capital murder case.

A defense attorney argues that the shooting was not a sanctioned hit ordered by Norteño gang leaders, as the prosecution claims. She says the evidence indicates the slayings were the result of an ex-boyfriend seeking retribution.

The court documents reveal publicly, for the first time, some of what was said behind closed doors to a criminal grand jury, which indicted seven men accused in the east Modesto shooting.

The documents were filed as part of a defense motion to dismiss charges against one of the defendants.

The defense attorney says the prosecution presented a lot of inadmissible evidence, so the judge should throw out the indictment. The prosecutor argues that there was sufficient admissible evidence presented to the grand jury that supports the indictment.

The defendants have been indicted on murder charges in the shooting deaths of 16-year-old David Siebels, 19-year-old Alyxandria Tellez and 31-year-old Edward Joseph Reinig. They were killed March 3, 2012, inside a home on McClure Road, across from Creekside Golf Course.

About six hours after the killings, Ricky Javier Madrigal sent a text message to Jose Osegueda Jr. Prosecutors said the intercepted message stated: “Hey, have everyone dispose of everything ASAP and trash phones now. Three confirmed not with us anymore. I’m on a new phone in an hour.”

Deputy District Attorney Marlisa Ferreira explained the text message to the grand jury by saying: “They completed the aforementioned tasks. They proceeded with extreme prejudice. Their house was a go, and three people are no longer with us.”

The criminal grand jury in December indicted Osegueda, Madrigal, Richard Tyrone Garcia, Armando Osegueda, Joseph Luis Jauriqui, Robert Palomino and Juan Jose Nila.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Garcia, Armando Osegueda and Jauriqui. If convicted, the four other defendants face a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

The slayings, authorities have said, are connected to the torture of a 19-year-old woman about a month earlier. That woman later was the only survivor in the attack in the McClure Road home.

The prosecution says Garcia repeatedly punched his girlfriend’s head and face. The victim was identified as “Jane Doe” in court documents. Armando Osegueda brought Garcia tape to bind the woman’s arms and legs, according to the court documents filed by prosecutors.

Garcia choked the woman until her body shook, held a gun to her head, cut her hair with a knife and used a lighter to burn her legs, according to the prosecution. After several days of being held against her will, the woman was able to leave the Ceres apartment she shared with Garcia and reported the incident to police.

Mary Lynn Belsher, Madrigal’s defense attorney, pointed to the reported torture as an indication that the shootings were personal retaliation ordered by Garcia, “who made good on his repeated threats to kill Jane and her family.”

“Whatever the actual motive for the McClure homicides, there is no evidence that Madrigal shared anyone’s specific intent to kill,” Belsher wrote in her motion.

She says the prosecution went to great lengths to prompt one former gang member to testify that the triple homicide was in retaliation for drugs seized during the investigation into the reported torture. Belsher said investigators confiscated from Garcia’s Richland Avenue home methamphetamine, steroids and about $6,500.

The prosecution says investigators searched Garcia’s home and seized guns, ammunition, cash and drugs, along with a phone list of gang members and their street monikers, according to the court documents.

Madrigal’s involvement in the case was on the night of the shooting, when he drove Garcia to Oregon. A Norteño gang member, who was housed with Garcia in jail, testified to the grand jury that Madrigal agreed to be Garcia’s alibi.

“That is evidence that he (Madrigal) knew what was going on,” Ferreira told the grand jury. “That is evidence that he knew what the intent was, and he knew he was participating and facilitating getting (Garcia) out of town to stick with the plan.”

Belsher argues that the testimony concerning Garcia’s alibi is inadmissible, even though the prosecution relied on it to indict Madrigal. “However, there is no evidence that Madrigal had any prior knowledge that the trip was a pretext intended to distance Garcia, both literally and figuratively, from the McClure homicides,” Belsher wrote in her motion. “Rather, the trip to Oregon was a regular occurrence and on at least one other occasion, Madrigal was asked to be the driver.”

Belsher is asking the court to dismiss the charges against Madrigal. She argues that her client’s rights to due process were violated, and that the prosecution did not present sufficient evidence to obtain an indictment.

“The grand jury record is riddled with speculation, hearsay, inadequate foundation, misconduct and inadmissible evidence,” Belsher wrote in her motion to dismiss charges filed Aug. 1. “Incompetent and irrelevant evidence was admitted and relied on, often in a misstated but more prejudicial form by the prosecution, to secure an indictment against Madrigal.”

In her response to the defense motion, Ferreira argues that presenting to the grand jury evidence that would have been excluded at trial doesn’t render an indictment void. She says the jury also heard sufficient admissible evidence to support the indictment. “All that is required by way of evidence to support an indictment is a reasonable probability of the defendant’s guilt,” the prosecutor wrote in her response filed with the court Oct. 1.

Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Thomas Zeff is expected to rule on the defense motion in a hearing today.

This story was originally published November 11, 2013 at 8:23 PM with the headline "Court documents reveal what grand jury heard in Modesto triple homicide."