CA CA - Lisa Gondek, 20, Oxnard, 12 December 1981

http://www.wfsb.com/Global/story.asp?S=4535113

As a killer roams the streets, the victim's family says investigators have dropped the ball. Tonight hear it in their own words.

Channel 3 I-Team reporter Kara Sundlun has the story of a Connecticut woman killed in California in 1981.

SUNDLUN: Investigators here at the state crime lab in Meriden say DNA is the key to solving this case. But it doesn't belong to them. Lisa Gondek was killed in California. Her mother says red tape and lousy police work are standing in the way of justice.

Gondek was 20 years old and had her whole life in front of her when she left her home in East Hartford for sunny California. But she only lived for six more months before someone killed her and set her apartment on fire.

"When you have children from the time their baby's if their upset hurt you take care of it as a mother and make it better," says her mother Gloria Maynard. "I can't make this better."

Gloria Maynard has been waiting 24 years for justice.

Her daughter's 1981 murder is one of the oldest cold cases in Oxnard, California. north of Los Angeles.

"I think it was such a bad job of police work at the time," Maynard says.

In the beginning police thought Lisa was killed by someone who brought her home from the bar that night.

She was found strangled in the bathtub, and the killer tried to rape her. A bite mark was the only clue.

"The bite mark was the only evidence they had because of the fire," Maynard said.

But that bite mark wasn't an exact match to the suspect, and back in 1981 police didn't have DNA technology so there wasn't enough evidence to charge that man.

As it turns out, he didn't do it.

The I-Team discovered recent DNA tests have now exonerated him and linked Lisa's murder to another cold case in the next town over.

We found out a serial killer may still be on the loose.

"You have two victims that they can link that they know for sure," said Captain Paul Krisavage of the state crime lab. "How many other victims? I'm not sure."

Krisavage works at the state crime lab in Meriden. He was one of many to get a letter pleading for help from Lisa's mom.

At the captain's urging the state has offered to let police in California use Connecticut's lab for free. Even doctor Henry Lee -- who used to run our state lab -- has offered to help.

Police in California have not accepted the offers. And they tell eyewitness news they can't discuss the case because it's under investigation.

"One time the district attorney out in California said to me 'if you just had more faith in god and could let your daughter go you would be much happier.' I thought you don't have children," Maynard said.

The I-Team located Debbie Beacham in Manchester who was Lisa's roommate when she was murdered. In all these years detectives never called her.

The I-team has discovered both Lisa and the other woman killed frequented the same bar.

"There was no forced entry..maybe she knew him and opened the door," said Beacham.

"I would feel like if they caught them at least I did something.someone had to pay for her death," Maynard says.

In California new laws require prisoners to give DNA samples. Detectives are hoping they will find a match soon.

But if the killer isn't in jail for something else, they may never find him unless he strikes again.

This reminds me of another case from southeastern Texas. I am thinking Lufkin, but will have to check. A young woman, 19 or 20, was found dead in her apartment after someone had set fire to her bed. She was in the bed, but dead before the fire. Police, at least early on, believed she had invited someone she met in a bar to her apartment. I think this was in the 90s. I'll go looking.

From February 2011:

http://www.vcstar.com/news/30-years-later-detectives-still-hunt-for-killer

Sheriff's detectives received plenty of tips after two young women were raped and strangled 11 months apart in 1981, but the cases were never solved. Three decades later, cold case investigators from the Ventura County Sheriff's Department are revisiting those leads, using DNA evidence to determine whether any of those mentioned early on in the cases of Rachel Zendejas and Lisa Gondek were responsible for their deaths...

"The DNA evidence alone is so unique to the case... Once we get a match, that'll be it," said Aviles, one of three part-time detectives in the sheriff's cold case unit...

Zendejas' killing was initially investigated by the Sheriff's Department; the Oxnard police handled Gondek's case. The homicides weren't linked until DNA evidence surfaced more than 20 years after their deaths. Genetic evidence showed the same man killed both women, but it didn't match any known offender. The only other concrete link between the killings was Huntington's night club in Oxnard, which both women visited within hours of their deaths.

Click to expand...

Gondek’s case is listed first among the 178 unsolved murders detailed on the Oxnard Police Department’s cold case website, coldcase.oxnardpd.org.

“That’s my white whale,” says Det. Jeff Kay, OPD’s cold case investigator who launched the website in July 2018.

Resource for unsolved cases​

Kay stays in touch with Gondek’s mother and continues to seek witnesses who may have information about the murder, which is where the website becomes an investigative asset.

While the website hasn’t helped close any cases, Kay says it has definitely generated case information; family and other people with potential information on a case have felt encouraged to reach out.

“I’ve had people call me with information, sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s not,” says Kay. “Relationships change over time; someone will come forward and say, you want to look at this.”

68-year-old Tony Garcia has been arrested for the murders of Rachel Zendejas and Lisa Gondek. A press conference will be held today at 11:00 AM.

Photo of 65-year-old Tony Garcia, arrested February 7, 2023 after the Ventura County Sheriff's Department said he was linked by DNA to the murders of two women in 1981.

''Both women visited the same now-defunct nightclub in Oxnard shortly before they were murdered.''

“After more than four decades, justice is finally coming to the families of Rachel Zendejas and Lisa Gondek,” said Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko. “As this case demonstrates, murder charges can be brought at any time and there is no statute of limitations for homicides. We thank the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, and the Oxnard Police Department for never giving up on finding Rachel and Lisa’s killer.”

they can't be his only victims

In addition to the two counts of murder, 68-year-old Tony Garcia of Oxnard is also facing several special allegations including multiple murders, and in the case of one of the victims, murder while engaged in rape and kidnapping.

Those special allegations could mean a death sentence if Garcia is convicted and if the DA decides to pursue the death penalty instead of life without the possibility of parole, a decision that prosecutors will make at a later date.

The Ventura County district attorney’s office will not pursue the death penalty for Tony Garcia, the man charged with the 1981 killings of Camarillo resident Rachel Rodriguez Zendejas and Oxnard resident Lisa Gondek, the prosecutor told the Acorn.

Rodriguez Zendejas’ brother has accepted that decision.
“As long as I see justice and life with no possibility of parole, that’s what I want,” Roy Rodriguez said in an interview.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Richard Simon said the court granted the DA office’s motion for conditional examination of witnesses, and state law precludes such examinations from being used in death penalty prosecutions.

“We have a few elderly witnesses with health issues, so we want to get their testimony in before trial to be used,” Simon said.
Garcia

The examination is scheduled for 8:15 a.m. Aug. 16. The date for Garcia’s preliminary hearing is expected to be determined then, and Garcia will likely be present.

“I want him to see all the people I have support from when he walks in the courtroom,” Rodriguez said. “I want to fill the seats up so he sees the support I’m getting and he knows that we’re not going away.”

On Jan. 18, 1981, two newspaper delivery boys discovered the body of 20-year-old Rodriguez Zendejas in a carport near her apartment in the 700 block of Mobil Avenue. Rodriguez Zendejas had been raped and strangled, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.

Later that year, on Dec. 12, firefighters called to a fire at an apartment in the 1200 block of W. Gonzales Road in Oxnard found the body of 21-year-old Gondek, according to the Oxnard police chief. She had also been strangled.

In 2004, investigators learned that DNA found on the two victims’ bodies traced back to the same person. Police said Garcia was identified as the killer of both women due to genetic genealogy, which compares DNA samples from a crime scene to DNA samples uploaded to genealogical research databases.