Inmate booked in '79 slaying of Fresno child

Published online on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009

A San Quentin inmate serving a life sentence for two Fowler homicides has been arrested in the cold-case murder of Victoria Ann DeSantiago, an 8-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and slain in 1979.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said improved DNA technology enabled detectives to link Fernando Eros Caro to the case, and prosecutors will likely seek the death penalty. Caro, 59, also will be prosecuted on charges of killing two teens in Bakersfield, he added.

Victoria and her sister, Eva Marie, 3, were abducted near Belmont Avenue and First Street on Feb. 3, 1979, while walking to a store with their dog. Eva Marie was found safe hours later on the 3500 block of East Ashlan Avenue. Victoria's nude, bludgeoned body was found two nights later at the bottom of a dry creek near Leonard and Ashlan avenues east of Clovis.

(Video: Victoria Ann DeSantiago's father speaks at news conference.)

"We know he has killed at least five children," Dyer said of Caro, who is serving the life term after a death sentence was overturned in the 1980 slayings of Fowler teens Mark Hatcher and his cousin, Mary Helena Booher, both 15.

Police believe Caro killed random targets.

Victoria's kidnapping sparked a frantic search throughout Fresno by police and family. According to reports at the time, officers learned from Eva Marie that the dog, Benji, ran away from the girls after they bought some items at the store. Two strangers offered to help them find the dog and the sisters got in their car. Eva Marie was told to get out on Ashlan, and the men drove off with Victoria.

Detective Carlos Leal said Tuesday that investigators now believe Caro acted alone.

"His method of operation has always been acting by himself, and we have no physical evidence linking anyone else to this case," Leal said.

When Victoria's body was found, shock reverberated through the community and continued for years. Spanish-language radio station KMAK offered a $20,000 reward for the killer's capture. When the reward went unclaimed, it was turned into a scholarship named after Victoria at San Joaquin Memorial High School in 1982. The crime also inspired a coloring book called "Playing It Safe" that warned children about crime and drugs.

Dyer credited Leal with continuing to investigate the case, retesting the DNA evidence, and finally linking Caro to the slaying.

Fresno police detective Bartlett Ledbetter said samples from the crime scene were sent to state DNA investigators twice before last year.

Both times, he said, tests were not done out of concern that the sample was too small to yield conclusive results and could be destroyed by the testing.

But the lab was finally able to work with the sample last year. Improved technology means a smaller sample now can be sufficient to help identify a suspect, Ledbetter said.

In recent years, DNA sampling technology has significantly improved, Harald Otto Schweizer, a criminology professor at California State University, Fresno.

"The DNA testing has gotten better," he said. " ... with technology advancing, they can do more with less."

Leal learned earlier this year from the state Department of Justice that there was a preliminary match with Caro. He got a warrant and obtained a DNA sample from Caro that definitively linked him to the killing, Dyer said.

Victoria's parents, Joe and Angie, appeared with police at a news conference Tuesday to thank officers for closing the case.

"I cannot express how grateful our family is for bringing this forward and finding for us some type of peace and justice," said Angie DeSantiago.

Caro, who grew up working the field with other migrants, completed his education and went on to major in civil engineering at San Diego State University.

But he left college a few units short of his degree to join the Marines, become an officer and fly attack helicopters. Before his arrest, Caro cleaned tanks for a corporation that produced pesticides.

The Fowler killings occurred in August 1980 when Hatcher was bicycle riding with Booher.

Hatcher was gunned down in a peach orchard at the rear of his parents' home at 5747 S. Clovis Ave. Booher's body was found in a Fresno orange grove.

Caro was convicted in 1981 of murdering Hatcher and Booher, and of kidnapping Booher.

He also was convicted of attempting to murder Jack Lucchesi, then 25, and Rich Donner, then 23, who confronted Caro shortly after the teens were killed.

Caro's death sentence was overturned in 2002 by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which criticized his lawyer for failing to investigate the possibility that Caro suffered brain damage from exposure to pesticides and child abuse.

Kern County officials said in 1981 that ballistics evidence linked the gun used to kill Hatcher and Booher to the killing of two Bakersfield girls, 15 and 16, but did not think prosecution was worthwhile as long as Caro received a death sentence in Fresno County.

Caro's incarceration and earlier death sentence attracted worldwide attention, including Web-based petition drives citing his pesticide exposure and child abuse defense.