A federal jury on Tuesday found a San Diego man guilty of planning and carrying out the murder of his wealthy Texas boyfriend in Mexico, a crime that prosecutors called personal, brutal and vicious.

David Enrique Meza, 26, lured Jake Clyde Merendino, 51, to the side of the road near Rosarito in the early morning hours of May 2, 2015, and stabbed him 24 times, gutting him and delivering two final slashes to the neck, according to evidence presented at trial. The victim was then dragged to a cliff and dumped over the edge.

Meza was after Merendino’s money, prosecutors said. With his death, Meza stood to inherit the Texan’s $3 million estate plus the $273,000 oceanfront condominium Merendino had just closed on the day before near Rosarito.

Jurors reached the verdict — guilty of foreign murder of a U.S. national and conspiracy to obstruct justice — after a week of deliberation. It also happened to be the second anniversary of Merendino’s death.


The case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, and the defense largely focused its attack of the prosecution on the absence of physical evidence linking Meza to the crime scene.

The two men met in 2013 after Meza, a body-builder who admitted in a video that he was straight but did “gay things” for money, posted an online ad. Merendino answered the ad, paying Meza $100 to visit his Pacific Beach hotel, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Ciaffa in his closing arguments.

Merendino was smitten and the two dated long distance. Soon after Meza began sprinkling emails with “I love you,” he began to receive lavish gifts from Merendino. In their two years of dating, Merendino would give Meza a sports car worth $45,000, some $20,000 in cash and other perks, prosecutors said.

In an interview with a San Diego police detective, Meza admitted he knowingly pulled out the stops to keep the money flowing. “I used him, I took advantage of him,” he said in a recorded interview.


But Meza led another life, with a girlfriend who became his fiancée in October.

He explained away his newfound flashiness to friends and family saying he was an accountant helping rich clients like Merendino, who he referred to as “George,” prosecutors said. He said he was merely helping George purchase a condo.

“For two years he created lives in two separate worlds. Both were based on lies and deceit,” Ciaffa said.

Those two worlds were beginning to collide, Ciaffa said, with Meza and his girlfriend expecting a baby in June 2015 and Merendino moving to Rosarito hoping Meza would be his live-in lover.


Prosecutors argued that Meza began to formulate his exit plan around Thanksgiving: kill Merendino, get rich and focus on his growing family.

On May 1, the deal for the condo closed, leaving Meza the beneficiary should Merendino die, according to evidence presented at trial. The two checked into a Mexico resort and celebrated, and Meza left for the U.S. on his motorcycle late that night. About 1 a.m., Meza called Merendino, saying his bike had broken down on the side of the highway in Mexico and he needed help.

Merendino left, telling a hotel security guard that’s where he was going.

About 3 a.m., Merendino’s body was found off the cliff. The bloody attack began inside his parked Range Rover and then ended in the dirt outside.


By then, Meza was heading back into the U.S. — wearing different clothes than at an earlier border crossing. His pregnant fiancée, Taylor Langston, had also entered Mexico in a separate car, and she crossed back into the U.S. as well.

Meza at first lied about being in Mexico when the killing occurred, but then said he had lured his boyfriend to a spot near the murder scene with the intent to steal his stereo equipment. Meza said he doesn’t know why he didn’t follow through with it. He said he left on his bike.

Defense attorneys theorize someone saw Merendino at the side of the road alone, forced him to drive up the road a bit, and then killed him and robbed him. A Mexican crime scene technician testified it appeared two sets of footprints were found at the scene.

Defense attorneys questioned how Meza could have inflicted that many stab wounds on the victim — a 310-plus-pound, 6-foot-4-inch man — and then dragged his body alone. No physical evidence links Meza to the crime scene either. Even the clothing he was seen wearing before the murder was tested for blood and DNA, the defense said.


Cellphone pings that prosecutors alleged put Meza at the murder scene were inaccurate, federal public defender Richard Deke Falls argued during closing arguments. The pings instead placed him at a nearby spot where the stereo robbery was supposed to go down.

Late that same day, Meza and Langston returned to Mexico to clear out Meza’s things at the hotel room he’d shared with Merendino. They also concocted an alibi should police raise questions: that they’d been hanging out with a friend in Tijuana that night, prosecutors said.

Eleven days after the killing, Meza mailed a handwritten will dated in December 2014 that appeared to leave him Merendino’s estate. Meza also drained Merendino’s bank account, prosecutors said. He also Google searched his name in connection to the murder.

He sent Langston several text messages and a voicemail in the weeks that followed expressing remorse and guilt for an unknown act, according to evidence.


Falls argued that Meza couldn’t have premeditated this murder because the alleged plan was incredibly dumb and so full of chances to fail or get caught.

“This is not the way to commit a plan-in-advance murder,” said Falls.

Meza’s statements of guilt instead referred to him unknowingly luring Merendino to his death, Falls argued. “He knows he’s responsible for Jake being killed. He did call him out there that night.”

Langston, who was also charged as an accomplice, pleaded guilty in February to obstruction of justice for her role in the cover-up.


kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis