UT - Vanessa Nieto, 15 mos, beaten to death, Salt Lake City, 3 Oct 1988

Dawn Nieto cried silently as she recalled walking into her 15-month-old daughter's bedroom to find her dead almost 26 years ago... "I just remember grabbing her. She wasn't breathing," Nieto testified in 3rd District Court Thursday. "I started screaming, 'What happened? What happened?'"

All the while, she said, her roommate, Louis Duran, kept saying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Duran, 54, appeared before a judge Thursday in a preliminary hearing for a case that was first closed more than two decades ago. The case was reopened this year, and in May, Duran was arrested and charged in 3rd District Court with second-degree murder, a first degree felony, according to 1988 statutes. The charge carries a potential maximum sentence of life in prison.

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Police began looking into the cold case after Salt Lake police detective Thomas Flores determined it was "inappropriately closed" in 1988.

Prior to her daughter's death, Nieto observed bruises on the child's head and cheeks after a brief time that the girl had been left in the care of her roommates. One of the roommates said the child had fallen off a bed...

On the day the child died, Nieto put her daughter down for a nap after the child had been acting ill. Nieto left the girl asleep in Duran's care while she and Duran's sister left the house to run errands. Less than an hour later, Nieto returned and found her daughter where she'd left her, but the girl's lips were blue and her body was stiff.

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Dawn Nieto, who is the mother of the girl, had moved in with Duran and his sister shortly after breaking up with the infant’s father. According to reports, Louis Duran would frequently look after children because he did not have a job...

The Utah police were able to arrest the man 25 years after the fact due to the review of the medical reports. Medical officials reviewed the autopsy report in the recent months had informed the police that the girl was a victim of ongoing abuse and had bruises, bite marks on her face and forearms, as well as multiple skull fractures and brain swelling. The report also showed that the girl had ear and urinary tract infections at the time of her death.

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As a preliminary hearing resumed Friday in the 1988 death of a 15-month-old girl allegedly killed by the mother’s roommate, a medical examiner testified that the child was too old to have succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Deputy Utah Medical Examiner Ed Leis added that the multitude of the girl’s injuries go beyond scope of what could be considered accidental, and are most likely from inflicted trauma. She had several bruises on her face and internal head injuries, including two small skull fractures, Leis testified.

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“Just him admitting it is something we all needed to hear,” she said after the hearing. “Especially my sister. We’ve never heard him admit it, take responsibility for it.”

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