Detectives secretly placed a GPS device on Antolin Garcia-Torres's red Jetta. They searched the Morgan Hill trailer he shared with his mother, pregnant wife and toddler daughter. They questioned him several times and collected as evidence his blankets, pillows, boots and clothes. Around the clock for nearly two months, sheriff's detectives kept him under surveillance -- hoping he would lead them to missing 15-year-old Sierra LaMar.
Tuesday, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith explained why detectives finally arrested the 21-year-old high school dropout Monday night and why they believe that even without blood or body, Sierra LaMar is dead.
His DNA was on her clothing folded in her Juicy-brand bag that was found tossed into a field two days after she vanished, Smith said. And clinching the case just days ago, the crime lab matched Sierra's DNA with items found in Garcia-Torres's red Jetta, confiscated by police in early April. In cases like this -- stranger abductions that Smith called the worst type of crime -- most victims are killed within three-and-a-half hours.
It's a conclusion that Sierra's mother, Marlene LaMar, doesn't want to believe. At a press conference Tuesday, every time the sheriff repeated that Sierra was surely dead, LaMar -- standing pale and trembling behind her -- shook her head.
"As a mother I'm hopeful. Her body has not been found and that gives us hope," LaMar said. Then she made a personal plea to the
Garcia-Torres: "Lead us to Sierra," she said, "and end this nightmare."Garcia-Torres's sister, however, is convinced authorities have the wrong man.
"It's not him," Lucero Garcia told this newspaper Tuesday. He lives with his mother, wife and daughter in a cramped trailer in the Maple Leaf RV Park on Monterey and Watsonville roads -- abouit seven miles south of Sierra's home.He has worked lately doing odd jobs for friends, including pruning trees.
His mother, Laura Torres, said the family was well aware he was under surveillance; they found GPS devices under his and her cars. When police seized his car on April 7, he told her, " 'I've never seen that lady. I've never made contact with her.' "
Garcia-Torres worked at Safeway on Tennant Avenue in Morgan Hill as recently as 2010 -- the same Safeway where he was arrested at gunpoint Monday night. With evidence in the Sierra case, police have also linked him to a 2009 Taser assault of a woman in her car in that Safeway parking lot.
Interrogating Garcia-Torres for several hours Monday night failed to reveal further clues to Sierra's whereabouts. But teams continued to search Uvas reservoir and other south county waterways Tuesday and a previously scheduled
volunteer search will go forward as planned Wednesday."I'm glad they have a lead," said Karah Silacci, 38, of Gilroy, who has volunteered on several searches for Sierra based from Burnett Middle School in Morgan Hill. "But I'm refusing to listen to the murder part."
Sierra's disappearance made headlines across the country and mobilized hundreds of volunteers after the high school freshman student -- who transferred from Fremont's Washington High School in the fall-- vanished March 16 on her way to the bus stop on a lonely country road around the corner from her home.
Patient police work, FBI profiling, DNA and circumstantial evidence all led to Garcia-Torres, Sheriff Smith said. It was made all the more difficult, she said, because it appears to have been purely random.
Within two days of her disappearance, detectives found Sierra's cell phone tossed into a field near her home, then in a field two miles away, her bag. Authorities still either don't know or won't say whether they were clothes she was wearing at the time of the kidnapping or spare clothes she kept in her bag.
The first major breakthrough came on March 28 -- 12 days after Sierra's disappearance -- when the crime lab came back with news that DNA found on Sierra's clothing matched Garcia-Torres. His DNA coding was already in the law enforcement database.
In May 2009, police reports show that Garcia-Torres was arrested for obstructing justice when Morgan Hill police arrived at his former home looking for a probationer believed to be living there. Garcia-Torres repeatedly cursed at officers and told them to leave. Later, while being held in a town jail cell awaiting booking, he reportedly overflowed the cell's toilet and engraved graffiti into a bench. Police added a charge of vandalism and he was sentenced to 10 days in jail and one year probation.
In June 2010, he was arrested on suspicion of felony battery by sheriff's deputies after allegedly punching a tenant who owed his mother rent, according to the report. Charges were never filed in that case.
Evidence collected in the Sierra case also led authorities to believe Garcia-Torres was involved in at least one of three unsolved nighttime assaults in a pair of Safeway stores in Morgan Hill in 2009, Smith said. In one case, a man hid in the back of a parked car before accosting a female driver with the Taser.
The bigger breakthrough in the Sierra case came just days ago, when the crime lab came back with a positive match of Sierra's DNA in the red Jetta.
A command center established on the fourth floor of the Santa Clara County sheriff's office at one time had as many as 80 people monitoring hotlines where more than 2,000 tips poured in and plotting search maps.
Stranger abductions are rare. Out of 800,000 missing children nationwide, about 150 a year are kidnapped or killed by strangers, according to the National Criminal Information Center database.
Although some 43 juveniles have been reported missing in Santa Clara County since January 2011, most of those have been reconciled, as runaways or involving parents, a sheriff's source said. Detectives realized from the first day that Sierra's disappearance was unusual.
A full month after the abduction, Sheriff Smith said in an interview she was still focusing on little else. And despite speculation that the kidnapper could have hopped on the nearby Highway 101 and driven hundreds of miles away in either direction within minutes, Smith maintained she was confident the suspect was in the area and knew it well. Garcia-Torres was born in the San Martin area just north of Morgan Hill.
She invited several agencies to help with the investigation, she said, including the U.S. Marshall's office and the FBI that helped developed both victim and suspect profiles. The FBI said it was unlikely the suspect had a record for sex offenses, she said, but might have prior attempted abductions. That also helped lead detectives to the three assaults in the Safeway parking lots.
Sheriff Smith says ample evidence has been collected, including forensic evidence and direct and circumstantial evidence that "contributes to our belief that Sierra is a victim of murder.' Some of that circumstantial evidence includes the fact that Sierra was a very social 15-year-old, the sheriff said, constantly tweeting and calling her friends. Not a soul has heard from her.
But Marlene LaMar still holds out hope.
"I believe there's a reason she wasn't found," she said. "We're not going to give up on that."
Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409.
timeline for sierra lamar case
March 16 -- 15-year-old Sierra LaMar disappears. She was supposed to walk to a Morgan Hill bus stop and catch a bus to Sobrato High School at 7:20 a.m.
March 17 -- Sierra's black Samsung Galaxy cell phone is found a few blocks from the bus stop.
March 18 -- Sierra's pink Juicy-brand bag, with a neatly folded T-shirt and pants inside, is found down the road from where the cell phone was discovered.
March 28 -- Investigators begin 24-hour surveillance of Antolin Garcia-Torres after evidence from the bag is linked to him.
April 7 -- Investigators seize Garcia-Torres' red Volkswagen Jetta, which has a black hood.
May 7 -- The sheriff's office asks the public if they have seen the Jetta, saying it is linked to Sierra's disappearance.
May 21 -- Sheriff's deputies arrest Garcia-Torres in front of a Morgan Hill Safeway store.
Tuesday -- Sheriff Laurie Smith says Garcia-Torres kidnapped and killed Sierra.
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