Homeless murderer suspect has a long history of crime
DNA evidence has put the “cold” four-year-old murder case of a Santa Monica woman back under the spotlight.
The Los Angeles County District Attorneys office has charged David Thomas Wright with capital murder in the killing of Aviva Labbe on June 14, 1998 in Santa Monica, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokesman for the DA’s office.
Wright, 47, is already in the California state prison system serving a 6-year sentence for battery of a Santa Monica police officer during an unrelated incident, authorities said. In January, a jury found Wright guilty of battery, resisting arrest, and failing to register himself as a sex offender.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Ellen Aragon last week filed charges against Wright, who was homeless and living on the streets of Santa Monica before being arrested, according to police.
Wright was a twice convicted felon before the murder and has an extensive arrest record, said DA spokeswoman Jane Robinson.
Labbe’s murder had been classified as a “cold case” and remained unsolved for nearly four years.
There were no suspects until a sampling of Wright’s DNA linked him to the murder through the US Department of Justice database system, police said.
“The DNA evidence we recovered was ultimately compared to a data bank,” said SMPD Lt. Ray Cooper, a homicide detective handling the case.
Wright was officially charged with the murder on June 13, one day before the 4-year anniversary of Labbe’s death, who was 20 years old when she was found sodomized and murdered in a walkway of a vacant home in Santa Monica.
Lt. Cooper said Labbe had just moved to Santa Monica shortly before she was murdered. Police did not say where Labbe had moved from or where her family was located.
Had she not been brutally murdered, Labbe would have celebrated her 25th birthday on June 20.
Authorities are not revealing the circumstances surrounding the murder.
“We don’t want to compromise the prosecution of the case or the investigation,” Lt. Cooper said.
The murder case against Wright is considered a “special circumstance” because Labbe was sodomized. A panel will review the case against Wright to determine whether the state will seek the death penalty, Robinson said.
Wright’s rap sheet goes back to at least 1990 when he pleaded no contest to petty theft. In 1993, he was convicted of possessing a dagger and given probation. In 1994, he was given a two-year prison sentence in an assault case. In 1999, he was acquitted for possessing a deadly weapon.
Earlier this year he was sentenced for assaulting a police officer and failing to register as a sex offender. The charges stemmed from a conviction in another state.
Wright is being held without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned on June 28.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 22, 2002. Read the original PDF.