Local News in Brief : Man Acquitted in Artist’s Slaying

After more than two days of deliberation, a Pasadena Superior Court jury acquitted a Glendale man of charges of murder, rape and burglary in the death of an elderly Glendale artist.

Hugo Beltran, 31, sobbed and clutched his attorney’s shoulder when the verdict was announced Monday. Beltran was charged in the death of Helen Kennedy, who was 73 when she was found beaten to death in her Glendale home on Aug. 9, 1987.

During the three-week trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Tamia Hope argued that fingerprints matching Beltran’s, found in the room where Kennedy was murdered, tied him to the crime.

But Beltran’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Morton Borenstein, argued throughout the trial that the fingerprints and other circumstantial evidence on which the case against Beltran was based were not sufficient to convict him.