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Thursday, January 23, 2020

Timothy Chavira: When Thirty Years in Prison Isn't Enough

     On August 22, 1986 in Burbank, California, 50-year-old Daniel Chavira returned home at six-thirty in the morning after completing his shift as a security guard. His wife, 48-year-old Laurie Ann Chavira's car was gone, and she was not in the house. As a night communications supervisor at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Burbank, Mrs. Chavira was usually at home by that time in the morning. Mr. Chavira reported his wife missing after he found blood stains in the kitchen and in the bathroom.

     Mr. Chavira's 23-year-old son, Timothy, lived int he house with his father and Laura Ann Chavira, his stepmother. He worked at odd jobs and had told his friends that he hated his stepmother. A year earlier, Timothy Chavira had been paroled from a prison in Oregon after serving time for an armed robbery.

     Homicide detectives, from the physical evidence in the house, believed that Laurie Ann Chavira had been beaten with a chair and possibly strangled. Nothing had been stolen from the dwelling and there were no signs of forced entry. Suspicion immediately fell on the missing woman's stepson.

     Eleven days after she was reported missing, Laurie Chavira's decomposing corpse was found in the trunk of her car abandoned in Pasadena, California.

     Police officers took Timothy Chavira into custody on September 4, 1986. A Los Angeles County prosecutor charged Chavira with the first-degree murder of his stepmother.

     Timothy Chavira went on trial in October 1987 before a jury of seven men and five women. The prosecutor, without an eyewitness or a confession, relied on physical evidence linking the defendant to the murder. Among this circumstantial proof included the discovery of the victim's car and house keys in the trunk of the defendant's car.

     Following a week-long trial, the jury, after deliberating more than three days, found Timothy Chavira guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

     In July 2017, after serving his full murder sentence, Timothy Chavira was released from prison. After thirty years behind bars, Chavira was still dangerous and unfit for society.

     On December 7, 2019, relatives of Editha Cruz deLeon found the 76-year-old retired gynecologist dead in her Burbank home. She had been stabbed and strangled. The victim had immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in 1970.

     On December 18, 2019, after being charged by a Los Angeles County prosecutor with murder, police officers took Timothy Chavira into custody for the killing of Editha Cruz deLeon.

     As of January 2020, the authorities in charge of the deLeon murder case have not released details regarding why they believe Timothy Chavira committed this homicide. 

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