Police Pin Hopes of Finding Girl’s Killer on Reward

At 2 p.m. on Dec. 8, 1980, children streamed out of the bungalow-style classrooms at Vaughn Street Elementary School in Pacoima. Some were met by parents or older siblings. Many walked home in twos or threes.

Though she didn’t attend Vaughn, 7-year-old Lisa Ann Rosales was let off a school bus there after attending classes in Granada Hills as part of a school district desegregation program. She joined three friends for the two-block walk to her home on Herrick Street.

The little girls walked past small, neat houses with well-tended lawns and bars over the windows, as well as empty lots overgrown with weeds and sprinkled with broken glass. They walked through a freeway underpass littered with debris before two of the girls turned at one corner and Lisa Ann and her companion continued on.

Her 6-year-old friend made it home that day, but Lisa Ann did not.

‘Delightful Child’

Around 2:15 p.m., the little girl whom school officials described as a delightful child and an “A” student, was abducted 10 houses from her home by a man police say was driving a yellow truck.

At noon the next day, Lisa Ann’s battered body was found in a ditch in Lake View Terrace, near Hansen Dam, less than three miles from her home. She had been sexually molested and strangled.

Police had at least one witness to the abduction--the schoolmate who was walking on Herrick with Lisa Ann and had just crossed the street to continue home alone.

But more than four years, 500 leads and 100 interviews later, police are still trying to break the case. They hope a $25,000 reward offered last week by the Los Angeles City Council will prompt someone with information about the case to come forward.

Valid for 60 Days

Flyers publicizing the reward in English and Spanish will be posted in Pacoima this week, police said. The council’s offer is valid for 60 days.

“We’re pretty certain that there are one or two others who know about the murder. The suspect may have told someone, or someone may have known that the suspect did it. We hope that greed may motivate them to come to us,” Detective Cliff Ruff said.

Mary Rosales, Lisa Ann’s mother, said she learned about the reward offer Thursday.

“I’m really surprised, that was my first reaction,” Rosales said. “I’m shocked and grateful that they’re offering that much.

“I want to see that person brought to justice. I want to see him go to court and not to get off on a technicality. I don’t want him to get out so he can hurt someone else. If he’s caught, I want to see him get the death penalty,” she said.

Rosales, who now lives in Sylmar with her two sons, said she has not kept up with her daughter’s case for more than a year.

“I’m just trying to put everything behind me. But every time I open a paper and see my daughter’s picture . . . ,” she said, her voice trailing off. “What are you going to do?”

2 Detectives on Case

For police, the search for Lisa Ann’s killer continues. The 35 detectives who once worked the case, however, have dwindled to two: Ruff and Detective Al Ferrand. They work steadily at the Foothill Division station, and have amassed a file hundreds of pages long and several inches thick.

Ruff, who has worked on the case from the beginning, is a tall, broad-shouldered man with a boyish, friendly face. His face turns grim, however, when he talks about the Rosales case.

“So long as the suspect is not brought to justice, other children are in danger,” Ruff said. “When you watch an elementary school let out, you’re talking about hundreds of kids walking around unescorted. The Pacoima community is very concerned for its children’s safety,” he said.

Ruff and Ferrand conduct their investigation from a small, sparse office that contains a file cabinet full of unsolved cases. The detectives keep abreast of similar cases in the city, county and state, Ferrand said.

“We keep trying to find anything at all that can lead us to the killer. This Lisa Ann Rosales case is right at my right hand,” Ferrand said. “We will not quit until we find him.”

Similar Killing

Ruff suspects Lisa Ann’s killer may have abducted and killed an 8-year-old girl in South Los Angeles in 1983. Both victims were sexually molested and strangled, he said.

The second victim, Victoria Brown, was lured into a blue van as she walked home from school in the Watts area. Her body was found in the trunk of an abandoned car in Wilmington several days later, Ruff said.

The detectives say few cases in the northeast Valley have generated as much concern as the Rosales murder.

“It was devastating,” said Betty Jordan, office manager at the Vaughn Street school, where Lisa Ann attended kindergarten. Jordan, who has worked at the school for nine years, remembers the girl as a model student.

“She had leadership qualities,” Jordan recalled. “She was a very capable little girl.”

The day Lisa Ann died, she had received a Good Citizenship award at school and wore the badge pinned to her mauve-print dress. She was excited about the award and eager to show it to her mother, who was waiting at home.

The abduction and murder seemed to shock Pacoima residents because it occurred in daylight on a busy residential street.

“There are so many children walking home at that time and in that area,” said Elizabeth Burns, office manager at Vaughn Street Children’s Center, a nearby state-run school for children 2 to 11 years old.

“It was so hard to think that they could pick up some child on the street and not have anyone see it,” she said.

Ruff believes someone does know about the murder. He cites an anonymous tip three months ago that led detectives to their best lead--a suspect with a history of child molestation who may be hiding in Baja California, Ruff said.

Search Along Border

“We’re searching specifically in border cities, anywhere between California and Arizona,” he said. Mexican authorities are also participating in the search.

Unsolved child murders are not common, according to police.

“They’re rare to the point where you can only remember one or two,” said police spokesman Lt. Dan Cook, citing the Brown and Rosales cases.

“Most children are killed by someone they know,” he said.

Of 1,644 children reported missing in California, only 13 are listed as missing under suspicious circumstances, according to a spokesman for the missing persons unit of the state attorney general’s office.

Despite this low number, the heinous nature of crimes against children has spurred political leaders to initiate stronger penalties.

Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Los Angeles), who is influential in publicizing the plight of missing children, has proposed a Missing Children Act, which passed the state Assembly unanimously and is now before the Senate. It would stiffen penalties for child stealing and add five years to any kidnaping sentence where a sex crime against children is involved. It also establishes a state reward fund for information leading to the recovery of missing children.

Shortly after Lisa Ann’s murder, her father’s labor union offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the girl’s killer. However, that reward was withdrawn after the father left the union.

The $25,000 reward approved by the City Council was requested more than four years ago by former Valley Councilman Bob Ronka.

The reward was not adopted because of a paper work snafu, a spokeswoman for Councilman Howard Finn’s office said. Finn, who succeeded Ronka as councilman for the northeast Valley, reactivated the reward request about a year ago.

In Pacoima, the community also honors the memory of the slain girl.

A Lisa Ann Rosales Memorial Scholarship fund was set up in 1981 by Marvin Feldman, a Sherman Oaks financial consultant who said he cried when he heard about the murder.

The fund raised $10,000 in private contributions to provide college scholarships for underprivileged high school students in the northeast Valley.

Additionally, a Lisa Ann Rosales Garden was established at the Vaughn Street school with contributions from schoolchildren, staff and private businesses, Jordan said.

Today, the peaceful, grassy plot blooms with yellow roses, orange marigolds and tiny, blue daisies. It offers students and staff a peaceful place to sit and meditate.

In the center of the garden, a bronze plaque embedded in a granite rock reads: In memory of Lisa Ann Rosales.