‘You know what could happen if he talks’: Real estate fraud led to murder-for-hire plot, prosecutors say

One Monday evening in 2013, a gunman walked into Rigoberto Dupre’s auto repair shop in South Los Angeles and shot the 54-year-old in the back.

A bullet to the chest and two more in the head finished him off. Dupre died shirtless and in bluejeans, lying on the floor of the business that he dreamed of one day expanding beyond the converted house it occupied on Florence Avenue.

Dupre’s killing initially stumped detectives. The story, as told by the prosecution, only emerged years later — and with many questions left unanswered.

Dupre’s business dealings set him on a “collision course” with the man accused of orchestrating his death, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson said Tuesday at the trial of David Nelson, 50, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering and conspiracy to murder Dupre.

Hoping to make some money to invest in his auto repair business, Dupre got involved in a fraudulent deal with Nelson, Thompson told the jury in his closing argument. Unlike Dupre, an “unsophisticated” man who fixed cars six days a week, Nelson drove a Rolls-Royce and lived in a large home in Fontana, Thompson said.

Nelson was trying to steal equity from an Inglewood apartment complex, the prosecutor said. Posing as the property owner, Dupre obtained a loan against the building’s value for $375,000, which was then converted into gold coins. Nelson’s attorney, Jovan Blacknell, noted there was no evidence that Nelson received any of the gold.

About two years after the loan was made, investigators for the financing company confronted Dupre, who “laid it all out,” Thompson said. Shown a lineup of potential suspects, Dupre picked out Nelson as the man who put him up to it, records show.

Thompson argued this sealed Dupre’s fate. Dupre’s son would later tell detectives that Nelson showed up at his father’s business and warned the son: “You know what could happen if he talks.”

According to prosecutors, Nelson offered an associate, Tina Alexander, $5,000 to orchestrate Dupre’s murder. Alexander, 62, pleaded guilty to murder and testified against Nelson in exchange for a sentence of 15 years to life.

On paper, Alexander made a living overseeing a medical billing company, but in reality, Blacknell told the jury, she was a sophisticated criminal who had been “running a crime family” for three decades. Her past included a federal bank robbery conviction in 1997. Alexander’s husband and brother-in-law ran a crew that specialized in robbing check-cashing businesses by cutting holes in the roof and rappelling down from the ceiling, Blacknell said.

“Tina Alexander is a fascinating character,” he told the jury. “Tina could be the villain in a movie. If somebody made that movie, people might not even believe it.”

Prosecutors displayed text messages and phone calls that showed Alexander conducted surveillance of Dupre’s shop and called the business to see what hours Dupre worked. She sent a photograph of Dupre to her husband, Byron “Kid” Alexander, whose phone was being wiretapped by Ventura County sheriff’s detectives investigating the check-cashing robberies.

“See if bossman there,” he wrote in a text message to his wife, who then called Dupre and spoke for a minute and 10 seconds. After hanging up, Tina Alexander wrote: “Will be there in 30 mins.”

Their plans were derailed when Ventura County detectives moved in to arrest Byron Alexander in connection with the check-cashing robberies. “I’m in a high-speed chase with the motherf—ing police,” he told his wife during the 10-mile pursuit, while driving the car that Tina Alexander had rented for the purpose of murdering Dupre, Thompson told the jury.

Byron Alexander was found guilty of false imprisonment and second-degree robbery for a check-cashing heist, but his conviction would eventually be reversed on appeal. He was not charged in Dupre’s death.

After her husband’s arrest, Tina Alexander asked her brother-in-law to rent another car. She parked it on 69th Street, a few blocks from Dupre’s shop, and left the keys inside, the prosecutor said.

That evening, a gunman walked into the shop and killed Dupre without saying a word, Thompson said.

“Wallet was there, money was there,” Dupre’s son told ABC7 at the time, discounting robbery as a motive. “He didn’t pat him down, nothing. He just shot him and left.”

The prosecutor said the gunman walked through the back of the shop and climbed over a fence to the alley, where he fled in the getaway car.

“From start to finish, this was professional,” Thompson told the jury.

Blacknell urged the jury to consider the questions that prosecutors had not answered. The spoils of the fraud that set the alleged conspiracy in motion — more than $300,000 in gold coins — were never recovered. In all of Nelson’s phone, internet and bank records, police and prosecutors did not find a record of Nelson soliciting someone to murder Dupre after Byron Alexander was arrested.

And the biggest unknown of all: The shooter has never been identified, despite a $50,000 reward offer from the Los Angeles City Council to loosen the lips of potential witnesses.

“When does [Nelson] hire and recruit and pay this unknown killer?” Blacknell asked.

Jurors will begin deliberating Wednesday.