Nearly 4,000 fugitives find freedom beyond state lines

Brett Kelman | The Desert Sun and USA Today

Ten years ago, Armando Gonzalez bled onto his neighborhood street, four bullet holes in his torso. His wife and children, powerless to save him, watched as he slipped away. Two gunmen fled in a getaway car, vanishing into the fading evening light.

Gonzalez, 30, died right there, lying on the pavement in front of his house on Via Real in Desert Hot Springs. It was about 6 p.m. on Aug. 11, 2004.

Ten months later, local police caught one of the gunmen during a routine traffic stop. The other suspect was never found. Javier Hernandez Rodriguez, 31, remains a fugitive.

However, if Hernandez is found outside the state today, he will most likely be let go. Police throughout the country have been notified that prosecutors in Riverside County are unwilling to bring Hernandez back to California for prosecution, so there is no reason to hold him for the shooting.

(More: How many fugitives are from your county or city?)

Hernandez is one of thousands of Riverside County fugitives who are no longer being pursued across state lines. Over the past 19 months, nearly 4,000 felony fugitive warrants have been reclassified as "non-extraditable," abandoning the pursuit of accused robbers, rapists and, in a few cases, killers. In many cases, fugitives are reclassified without any notice to victims or the general public. Sometimes the local police aren't told.

These non-extradition warrants were uncovered during a joint project by The Desert Sun and USA Today which examined the FBI's National Crime Information Center, a database of more than 1.5 million wanted fugitives. Our investigation revealed that non-extradition warrants are on the rise nationwide, and have inexplicably skyrocketed in Riverside County.

Overall, the county has about 16,600 outstanding felony warrants listed in the FBI data. Of those warrants, nearly half — about 8,150 — are now classified as non-extradition warrants. That percentage has tripled since May 2013, when only 13 percent of warrants were non-extraditable.

Even stranger, three of Riverside County's "Most Wanted" fugitives were recently shifted to non-extradition warrants. Therefore, although the District Attorney's Office says these men are among the top priorities for prosecution, they will not be dragged back from places like Phoenix or Las Vegas, both of which sit merely four hours away on the wrong side of the state line.

All three of these "Most Wanted" fugitives are accused sexual predators who targeted children. They are:

•Javier Padilla, 42, of Palm Springs, who is accused of molesting a preteen girl more than 100 times from 2001 to 2005. According to police, Padilla admitted his crimes during secretly recorded phone calls before he vanished in 2010.

•Nicolas Contreras, 67, a Banning music tutor accused of molesting a child for three or four years, who then disappeared in 2009.

•Dewayne Edward Masterson, 36, formerly of Whitewater, who is accused sexually and physically abusing an underage girl.

Although sex-crime fugitives pose a great danger to the general population, the decision to reclassify these warrants was nearly invisible to the public. Authorities do not announce when a fugitive is no longer approved for extradition, and there is no public court filing made when a warrant is reclassified. The California Victim's Bill of Rights says that victims should be told of extradition decisions if they so choose to be informed.

Generally, extradition decisions are made by the DA's Office, and then the Riverside County Sheriff's Department keys the warrant details into a system run by the California Department of Justice, which in turn forwards the information to the FBI's National Crime Information Center. The FBI database distributes fugitive information to police departments throughout the country.

Both the sheriff's department and the DA's office have said they do not know why the county fugitives in the FBI database were reclassified. When questioned about the warrants, both agencies suggested that the Department of Justice may be responsible for the changes. It appears that county authorities were unaware that so many violent fugitives were recently reclassified as non-extraditable.

John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, said that local prosecutors approved extradition in many of the more serious cases identified by The Desert Sun and USA Today, and that those approvals should be reflected in the FBI database. Hall said the DA's office almost always approves extradition in violent felony cases, and he could not explain why the FBI records would show otherwise.

Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Mike Manning said that violent fugitives were correctly classified in sheriff's department records. If the extradition status of these fugitives had been changed, then the changes were made after the warrant information was handed off by the sheriff's department, Manning said.

"We looked at our system and everyone was squared away," Manning said. "The DOJ would hold any explanation as to why it would be changed in the (National Crime Information Center). … I don't know if they had a glitch in their system at some time, but that's the only explanation I can see."

The California Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment on the warrants.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if county law enforcement officials have intended to extradite these fugitives or not. As it stands today, it won't happen.

The Desert Sun and USA Today obtained information on local fugitives directly from the FBI database. This database guides the decisions of hundreds of thousands of police officers, who check the FBI records during arrests and traffic stops across the nation.

For example, if a speeder is pulled over by a local police officer on Highway 111, the officer will use the FBI database to determine whether the speeder has any outstanding warrants. The same would be done by officers in New York, Florida or any other state. However, if the only match in the database is a non-extradition warrant from another state, the officer would most likely issue a ticket and let the speeder go free.

It is "ridiculous" and "troubling" that so many violent fugitives could be let go in this scenario because of non-extradition warrants, said Mike Hestrin, the incoming Riverside County district attorney.

Hestrin questioned whether the mass reclassifications were the result of a widespread mistake, or possibly a misguided attempt to save money by minimizing extraditions. Either way, Hestrin vowed to correct the warrants after he takes control of the DA's office in early January. Prosecutors should always follow through on cases of child abuse, rape and homicide, he said.

"I want to get to the bottom of this," Hestrin told The Desert Sun. "If this is simply an error, then we need to correct it. If it is a policy, then I am going to reverse it."

Of the thousands of reclassified fugitives, most are wanted for minor crimes — like traffic offenses or probation violations — but many are not. Buried in the list of non-extradition warrants are at least 160 fugitives who are wanted for major crimes such as robbery, sexual assault or kidnapping. Dozens of those crimes occurred in the Coachella Valley.

The reclassified warrants also include more than 300 domestic violence fugitives. One of those, Alfonso Ramirez-Corona, is a Cathedral City man accused of brutally attacking his girlfriend in August 2009.

Police believe Ramirez-Corona punched and choked his girlfriend when she tried to break up with him, according to county court documents. When the woman tried to flee, Ramirez-Corona locked her in a bedroom for four hours.

Gina Avilez, the battered woman, said she was baffled by the decision not to extradite her ex. Just because he fled the state, he should not be safe from the law, she said.

"Why don't they care?" asked Avilez, who agreed to have her name used for this story. "He still has a record of something he's done wrong. Anywhere he goes, he should be punished. It's just not right at all."

The list of reclassified warrants also includes at least one more homicide suspect — Jorge Ernesto Cazares Jr., of Blythe, who is accused of shooting a man as revenge for a drug robbery two years ago. Cazares is a fugitive, and if he is found outside of California, he will likely not be brought back.

And finally, there is Hernandez, the fugitive from the Desert Hot Springs homicide.

At the time of the shooting, the victim, Armando Gonzalez, was pulling out of his driveway, taking his wife and children out to dinner. Police believe that Hernandez and another suspect, Miguel Enrique Felix, rushed up to the family's car, pulled Gonzalez out of the vehicle and shot him in the street.

In addition to his murder charge, Hernandez is wanted for armed robbery, kidnapping, assault, carjacking, burglary and numerous gun charges. According to court documents, police believe Hernandez may have been a "remover" — a robber who specifically targeted drug dealers.

Police suspect that Hernandez and Felix worked together on robberies in Los Angeles, Cathedral City and Thousand Palms, where they restrained their victims with zip ties.

Although Hernandez was never caught, Felix was arrested 10 months after the shooting in Desert Hot Springs. After he was pulled over for driving with a suspended license, sheriff's deputies found two loaded guns and a silencer in his car. After further investigation, deputies tied him to the shooting and a string of robberies.

Ten years later, Felix still awaits trial. Prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty. If Hernandez is ever found, it is possible he will face the same fate — if he is brought back to the desert to face charges.

The Desert Hot Springs Police Department, which originally investigated the 2004 shooting, was unaware that Hernandez had been reclassified as a non-extradition fugitive. Although the shooting may now be a cold case, investigators hold out hope their fugitive suspect will be caught somewhere someday.

"I'm shocked," said Larry Essex, a veteran detective. "If there is still a warrant for him, then there must be enough probable cause to make an arrest. We would certainly want to have him in custody."

INVESTIGATION FINDINGS

• Over the past 19 months, nearly 4,000 Riverside County fugitives have been reclassified as "non-extraditable," which means county law enforcement will not spend the time and money to bring them back to California to face charges. These fugitives includes accused robbers, rapists and, in a few cases, killers.

• The number of non-extradition fugitive warrants is rising nationwide, but they have skyrocketed in Riverside County. As of May 2013, only 13 percent of all fugitive warrants were non-extradition warrants. As of October, that figured had more than tripled, climbing to 49 percent.

• Three of the county's "Most Wanted" fugitives have been recently reclassified under non-extradition warrants. Local prosecutors have said this is an error that will be corrected.

Source: USA Today/Desert Sun investigation, FBI National Criminal Information Center

RIVERSIDE COUNTY FUGITIVES BY THE NUMBERS

• 16,637 outstanding fugitive warrants

• 8,153 of those are non-extradition warrants

• At least 160 of those are for violent offenders, accused of crimes like robbery, kidnapping or sexual assault

• At least 300 more are wanted for domestic violence charges

• Three of the county's "Most Wanted" fugitives have non-extradition warrants

Source: USA Today/Desert Sun investigation, FBI National Criminal Information Center