Former Olympian was original suspect
LAX COURTHOUSE — The jury trial is underway for the man suspected of kidnapping a Santa Monica elderly woman twice and who previously escaped from authorities.
Alfonzo Fitzgerald Taylor walked away from the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles the day before a separate jury trial was set to begin last May on charges of receiving stolen property and unlawful driving of a vehicle, an incident independent of the two alleged kidnappings of a Sunset Park woman that occurred in the fall of 2004.
Taylor, in his 40s, was captured in Georgia and returned to custody in Los Angeles County within weeks of his May 2005 escape, according to Kevin Halligan, the Deputy District Attorney prosecuting the case.
Taylor’s jury trial, which began on Friday, concerns the kidnapping and home robberies that occurred in the 1000 block of Bay Street in Santa Monica. Taylor faces seven felony charges related to two incidents that occurred on Oct. 18 and Nov. 4, 2004.
Last February, Taylor was charged with one count of kidnapping; two counts of first-degree burglary; two counts of first-degree residential robbery and two counts of making criminal threats.
Taylor has also faced one count of unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle; one count of receiving stolen property; one count of resisting a police officer and one count of driving as an unlicensed driver. Those charges, which he was to stand trial for last May, stem from him allegedly stealing a car in Las Vegas, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Taylor is a twice convicted felon — he served two years in state prison for a 1991 conviction for burglary and served another 12 years in state prison for a 1994 burglary conviction. Both crimes occurred in Torrance, according to the DA’s Office.
Prosecutors allege that in the Fall of 2004, Taylor also kidnapped Betty Tomeo, 76, whom he stole from and threatened to kill, first with a syringe and later with a screwdriver.
Friday’s proceeding included opening remarks by Halligan and testimony and cross examinations of Tomeo by attorneys.
Taylor appeared in court wearing a blue and white striped, long-sleeved dress shirt and blue jeans. He has short black hair, brown eyes and a beard. He is six feet, four inches tall, 215 pounds.
He seemed calm and attentive through the proceedings, occasionally grunting as the alleged victim testified.
Tomeo — who suffered from a heart attack the night of the first kidnapping — appeared in court in a wheelchair, wearing a pink sweater and breathing with the assistance of supplied oxygen.
Tomeo, who has white hair and blue eyes, seemed alert and well-spoken during her testimony.
At the time of the kidnappings, Tomeo was walking. However, she has been breathing with the assistance of supplied oxygen since before the alleged crimes took place, due to a lung she had removed because of lung cancer.
The trial is expected to continue next week.
TOMEO’S TESTIMONY Tomeo testified that on the night of Oct. 18 she returned home after a meeting of the Virginia Avenue Park advisory board, on which she served, to help oversee improvements to the park.
Entering her home, she noticed an intruder in her bedroom doorway. He was dressed in a black shirt and pants, wearing black gloves, and holding a syringe.
He was also wearing Tomeo’s straw UCLA hat. It had a blue banner and several pins attached to it.
Tomeo had owned it for more than 10 years.
“There was a man in the entrance to my bedroom, but what really got to me is that he was wearing my UCLA Bruin hat,” Tomeo testified, which she said she has never seen again.
She said, “How did you get in here?” and she said he replied, “‘That doesn’t matter. I want some money.’”
The man told her the syringe he was holding could kill her in 15 seconds if she failed to provide him with the $2,000 he needed. Panic stricken, Tomeo said she searched the house and was able to obtain approximately $100 for the intruder.
The intruder demanded she take him to an ATM machine to get him more money. He didn’t have a car and instructed Tomeo they would drive hers.
She entered the driver’s side of her 1966 Ford Mustang. Then the man pushed her to the passenger’s seat, she said. The car was a stick shift and he had difficulty driving it. He placed it in reverse and backed into a gate that blocked the driveway.
The car stalled, the man exited the vehicle and Tomeo said, “I was furious, screaming... ‘you’re ruining my car.’”
The man disappeared toward the front of the house for several minutes. Tomeo testified she was fearful that she couldn’t outrun him and so didn’t try to escape.
Eventually, the man drove them to the Vons market located on Lincoln Boulevard and Colorado Avenue. He waited inside the car, but told Tomeo if she failed to obtain the money two of his friends, who he said were at the house, would burn it down.
Tomeo, however, said she tried and failed to withdraw money from an ATM machine inside the store.
Tomeo said she asked an attendant for assistance. However, she didn’t attempt to notify anyone about the man who had kidnapped her.
She was unable to obtain the money, and when she returned to her car, the man was gone. So were her keys.
Police arrived at Vons, took a statement, then notified Tomeo they would need to speak more to her the following day. She laid down to get some rest, but said she felt strange. She called emergency services and was taken to Saint John’s, where doctors notified her she suffered from a heart attack.
The next major incident occurred on the night of Nov. 4. Tomeo testified she was watching TV in her living room, when she looked over her shoulder and noticed the same man who had previously broken into her home, she said.
He was dressed in black and wore a black knit ski cap.
He was holding a screwdriver, approximately two inches in length, she said.
“You tricked me,” the man told her, thrusting the screwdriver through the air in a threatening manner, she said.
She remembered she had some money that she had failed to give him during the first incident and went to retrieve it in her office. When she exited her office, he was no longer in the living room.
Tomeo said she was unsure of the man’s whereabouts, and didn’t care.
“I opened the front door and ran out of there faster than you can talk,” she told the court.
Tomeo contacted a neighbor two houses down the block. The neighbor returned to her home with a gun to try and stop the intruder(s) while another one called the police.
THE CROSS-EXAM Originally, former Olympic Silver Medalist Danny Harris was charged with the kidnappings in November of 2004. Police arrested Harris after trained bloodhounds following the scent of the black hat left by the kidnapper led authorities to Harris’ room at the Clare Foundation, a rehabilitation facility located off Lincoln Boulevard south of Interstate 10.
Harris tested positive for drugs in 1996 and was barred from competition. He has struggled for years with cocaine addiction. Harris, who captured a silver medal in track in the 1984 Olympics, spent nearly two months in jail before he was cleared of the charges.
Subsequent laboratory tests showed the kidnapper’s hat contained Taylor’s DNA. Taylor was already in custody on the stolen car charges. The two men, who share similar physical characteristics, claimed not to know one another.
Prosecutors initially refused to drop the charges against Harris, claiming the two men may have been working together. Although Tomeo only saw one kidnapper, at one point she said the kidnapper threatened to kill her and burn down her house, and referenced that he had two accomplices.
Prosecutors at the time pointed to three eyewitnesses who picked Harris out of a photo lineup. The three witnesses were a next-door neighbor who chased off the kidnapper with a gun, a nearby resident who saw the kidnapper strip off his shirt while fleeing the scene and the victim, who picked Harris along with two other people in the photo lineup as possibly the person who assaulted her.
Halligan said on Friday the shirt the kidnapper left as he fled the scene also contained Taylor’s DNA.
Two live police lineups were conducted in January of 2005 to see if the eyewitnesses would tie Taylor to the kidnap-pings. In the first lineup, Taylor stood in a line with five inmates. In the second line-up, Harris stood with five different inmates. None of the witnesses picked Harris. Tomeo identified Taylor, while the other witnesses picked different prisoners, Halligan said. Tomeo also indicated Harris could possibly have been the intruder, but she was more confident it was Taylor.
“I recognized him the second I saw him in the lineup, but I wanted to see everyone to be sure,” Tomeo testified.
However, Charles Elliot, Taylor’s attorney, seemed to feel there was too much uncertainty in the prosecution’s ability to properly identify the real suspect to conclude Taylor was, in fact, the perpetrator.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 21, 2006. Read the original PDF.