Montclair police appear to have solved the double homicide case involving killings in the southwest sector of the city last February heavily laden with gangland overtones.
On Sunday night February 8 Livied Arturo Sanchez, 33, of West Covina and Mario Padilla, 34, of Pomona were executed, with their hands bound by duct tape, in a detached garage behind the only home on an unlit gravel road that ran east from the 11000 block of Monte Vista Avenue in the southwest part of the city.
A third man, since identified as Edgar Rivera Calderon, was able to escape the assailants with his hands yet bound by duct tape behind his back. Bloodied and terrified, Calderon fled on foot southward down Monte Vista and was last seen by witnesses near the Monte Vista/Howard Street intersection.
Only sketchy information was publicly available at the time and there was widespread speculation that the third man had been overtaken by his assailant or assailants and executed elsewhere.
Calderon would turn up very much alive and now, two of the three people implicated in the murders are in custody. The third is yet at large.
According to Montclair Police Homicide Sergeant Bryon Kelly, Richard Corry Roach, 37, was arrested on August 13 at the Riverside Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Fugitive Recovery Task Force. Roach waived extradition and has been transported to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.
The second suspect in the homicides, David Nash McKell, 35, was in custody at the Los Angeles County Jail for an unrelated homicide when he was identified as a suspect in the Montclair murders. He was arrested at the Los Angeles County Jail in connection with the slayings.
As to the motive in the killings, Kelly told the Sentinel, “The suspects and the victims knew each other and were involved in illegal narcotics activity.”
Of Calderon, Kelly said, “We have talked to him. I don’t want to go beyond that.”
Kelly said the case was solved by “using witness statements and applying some of the technical assets we possess.”
Kelly said there was a “third suspect we have not been able to locate who was most likely the getaway driver. We do have one me lead we are following.”
In another matter, a bitter falling out between a now divorced couple who moved to Twentynine Palms soon after Pennsylvania authorities now say they murdered a man in Monroe County, Pennsylvania in 2002 has led to their arrests.
On July 12, 2002, the owner of a trucking company was at a disposal site his company used to dispose of sewage sludge on a secluded property on North Road in Jackson Township when he spotted two barrels that he had not placed on the property, in one of which the contents were still smoldering, He called authorities, who determined that the barrels contained the corpse of an unknown man who had been decapitated. An autopsy determined that the deceased had been stabbed eight time in the chest and once in the right thigh. The remains had been mutilated so thoroughly that authorities were unable, for 16 months, to ascertain the dead man’s identity. It was not until November 2003, that it was determined that it was Robert Roudebush, who was 46 at the time of his death, whose remains were in the barrel. Roudebush, of Luzerne County, was a petty criminal whose disappearance went unremarked for some time.
A little more than a month later, on August 24, 2002, James Arthur Britton, then 23, and Stacy Marie Britton, then 33, destroyed their Wilkes-Barre home by means of arson, and immediately pulled up stakes and moved cross country to California, settling in Twentynine Palms.
The Brittons’ relationship was a rocky one. Three days before Roudebush’s identity was publicly released, James Britton was in jail and requested an interview with his probation officer. He told the probation officer he was in possession of information relating to a man named Bob who was ‘burned in a barrel around July 2002.’ He related to the probation officer the victim was killed for having an affair with another man’s girlfriend. Britton identified the killer, who was convicted of a killing in an unrelated case.
Authorities had determined that the property where the barrels were found had on it a residence where Stacy Britton’s brother had lived.
Focus on the Roudebush killing faded in and out over the years. In 2008, James Britton was brought before a grand jury, to whom he repeated the story about Roudebush having been killed by a jealous boyfriend, the man who was in prison for another killing.
The matter might have gone unsolved but for an argument that broke out between the Brittons, now divorced, in July. From three quarters of the distance across the continent, Stacy, still in Twentynne Palms, and James, again residing in Pennsylvania, grew irate with one another and in a series of phone calls and text messages, the contretemps escalated.
At one point Stacy brought up the subject of Roudebush’s murder. James responded with a text message that read: “OK so you brought up the murder lets go there.” He reference the murder again and gave a description of an injury his ex-wife sustained during Roudebush’s execution. The phone and text exchanges left Stacy Britton seething. In early August she contacted police and told them she and her ex-husband used knives and hammers to kill Roudebush after he had stolen drugs and money from them. She gave a description of the murder and said they cut and chopped Roudebush’s body and put it in the two barrels, which her husband then transferred to the property on North Road and set on fire.
The Pennsylvania State Police brought James Britton in for questioning on August 20, at which point he confirmed, with some deviation in detail, what his wife had confessed to. According to him, it was Stacy who attacked Roudebush after the alleged thefts. He said it was Stacy who bludgeoned and stabbed Roudebush to death and that he had allowed Roudebush to pray before Stacy Britton killed him. He said that Stacy then went through Roudebush’s pockets to find any money or drugs on his person. According to both Brittons, the killing took place at their Wilkes-Barre home.
The two are now awaiting preliminary hearings in Pennsylvania after they were charged with homicide, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, abuse of a corpse, perjury, false swearing and hindering prosecution by concealing or destroying evidence. District Judge Colleen Mancuso sent them to Monroe County Correctional Facility without bail. Stacy Britton’s hearing is scheduled for September 11 and her ex-husband’s will be held September 18.