DA Offers Recordings of Police Interviews as Evidence in Simas Trial

Back in 1993, Ryan Simas told police that a local teenager was bragging about killing Ventura High School student Jesse Strobel and had threatened Simas to keep quiet about the crime, according to tape recordings of interviews played in court Thursday.

Prosecutors submitted the tapes as evidence in Simas’ murder trial. They contend that Simas was involved in the killing and spun an elaborate lie to throw police off-track.

On one of the tapes, Simas identifies a high school student as Strobel’s killer and tells detectives that he saw the teen with a carload of other youths near the spot where Strobel was stabbed Jan. 29, 1993.

“He was bragging about it to a girl I knew,” Simas says during one interview.

But Simas was lying, prosecutors say. Last year, 22-year-old Jose “Pepe” Castillo told a police informant that he stabbed Strobel to death during a late-night fight on a residential street. Castillo later pleaded guilty to Strobel’s murder.

Prosecutors are now going after Simas, 24, who they say drove the getaway car and participated in the fight that led to Strobel’s death. Simas, a Los Angeles resident and a chef at Spago restaurant in West Hollywood, is on trial in Ventura County Juvenile Court because he was 16 at the time. Because of the law at the time, Simas faces less than a year in custody if convicted because serious juvenile offenders could not be jailed past age 25.

During the first tape-recorded interview admitted as evidence Thursday, former detective Jim Burt, now a district attorney’s investigator, urges Simas to help Ventura police crack the case by calling the alleged killer while police listen in. “As a responsible person, you need to help us on this,” Burt says on the tape recording. “You’re our foot in the door.”

But Simas is hesitant, telling Burt he needs to talk it over with his parents.

Later in the interview, Burt again appeals to Simas’ conscience. “We’ve got a family out there that is never going to be able to rest,” he said, telling Simas to think of Strobel’s parents.

During the second interview, conducted a month later in April 1993, Simas tells detectives that he saw the alleged killer and five other teens driving near the murder scene an hour before Strobel was stabbed.

“Are you certain you saw him?” one officer asks, according to the tape recording. “This is very important.”

Simas tells the officer he picked up two friends in Santa Paula that night, then drove to Ventura where they cruised around for several hours. He says they picked up two other friends and then ran into the alleged killer and his friends at a fast-food restaurant.

As the interview progressed, detective Roger Nustad began to question Simas’ account and asked him if Simas was leading police on “a wild goose chase.”

In later testimony Thursday, a longtime friend of Simas reluctantly told Judge Brian Back that Simas recently told him that he was driving around with three friends the night of the killing and watched as one of the teens--Castillo--jumped Strobel and stabbed him.

“He didn’t know the guy had a knife,” said 24-year-old Mike Kenyon, recalling a conversation he had with Simas in April 1999. The discussion was brief, Kenyon said, and followed a lengthy interview between Simas and Ventura detectives.

“He was very exhausted, very drained,” Kenyon testified. “It wasn’t like we had a detailed conversation.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Simon accused Kenyon of backing away from his prior statements to authorities. Simon treated Kenyon as a hostile witness and questioned whether he has discussed his proposed testimony with Simas’ mother.

Testimony in the case is scheduled to resume Monday afternoon.