LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles police announced the arrests Monday of three people in connection with a deadly arson fire that destroyed a Westlake apartment building crowded with Latino immigrants in 1993 and left 10 people dead, including seven children.
The suspects — Johanna Lopez, Ramiro “Greedy” Valerio and Joseph Monge — were all linked to a violent sect of the 18th Street Gang known as the Columbia Lil Cycos, who ran the drug trade in the area where the apartment burned, court records show.
A fourth suspect has been identified and remains at large, police said at a news conference. They did not name that person.
The arrests capped years of investigations into what is considered one of the worst arson fires in L.A. history, a blaze long rumored to have been carried out by drug dealers who were incensed that a building manager demanded they stop using the apartment complex to conduct business.
Police first announced the arrests Saturday, but did not release any additional details. One law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said two men were arrested Friday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. A female suspect has been in custody on a murder charge since 2011.
LAPD Capt. Billy Hayes, who heads the department’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division, said investigators have known of the suspects’ involvement for at least five years, but needed additional witnesses to come forward before moving to make arrests last week. Several witnesses, Hayes said, had been intimidated by gang members. Their fears lessened over time, however, as the 18th Street Gang’s influence has diminished in recent decades.
“They are still a strong issue that we deal with, but nothing close to ’93,” Beck said of the gang.
Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey said she plans to charge Valerio and Monge each with 12 counts of capital murder. Charges against Lopez will be refiled, she said. The murder counts cover the 10 people killed in the blaze and two late-term fetuses, according to Lacey.
At the time of the May 1993 fire, the 18th Street Gang was terrorizing residents of the neighborhood, then a densely packed first stop for immigrants coming into L.A. from Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
As the flames spread, mothers threw babies out of windows, hoping someone would catch them. People formed human chains to pull residents down from upper floors. One man watched in horror as his wife and three of his children ran into the smoke, where they perished, huddled in a hallway. Another man also lost three children and his pregnant wife.
More than 100 residents were displaced, and more than 40 were injured. The seven children who died ranged in age from 15 months to 11 years. Two of the women who died were pregnant.
The fire exposed major flaws in the city’s fire inspection system. The building had recently been cited for fire code violations, but the owner failed to make the required changes.
The blaze also came to symbolize the desperate conditions faced by immigrants, both legal and illegal, who found themselves living in old, substandard apartments and facing daily threats from gangs who controlled the area.
Lopez, who has been described as a “drug wholesaler” who distributed narcotics under the protection of the 18th Street Gang, was first arrested in connection with the deadly blaze by the LAPD’s Major Crimes Unit in 2011, and has been awaiting trial for six years. She was scheduled to appear in court later this week to answer murder charges stemming from the fire, records show.
Valerio was known to be one of the leaders of the Columbia Lil Cycos in the 1990s, and investigators have said he collected drug money for the set by falsely claiming he was a member of the Mexican Mafia, the notorious prison gang that claims a large population in much of the state’s correctional facilities.
Irked by his decision to falsely claim membership, the Mexican Mafia hatched a plan to kill Valerio after he was sent to jail in 1994, but the assassin was intercepted by police, records show.
Valerio’s attorney, Gregory Rubel, said Friday’s arrest marked the “fourth or fifth” time his client has been arrested in connection with the same crime, though he has never been formally charged.
“Every time someone gets assigned to it, they arrest him,” Rubel said, adding that his client is being held on $25 million bail.
Rubel claims his client is being “targeted by the LAPD.” Valerio moved to the Antelope Valley years ago and now works in retail, his attorney said.
This is not the first time Los Angeles law enforcement officials believed they had arrested those responsible for the deadly blaze. Charges against two other members of the 18th Street Gang, Rogelio Andrade and Allan Lobos, were dropped in September 1999, records show. They had been arrested and charged with murder in November 1998.
The apartment complex where the blaze took place had been repeatedly cited for fire code violations, including faulty smoke detectors, that were blamed for the rapid spread of the blaze. Several fire doors had been propped, or in some cases nailed, open, which former Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald Manning said allowed the blaze to travel rapidly through the complex.
The owners had been ordered to place a 24-hour fire watch on the building in April 1993, just weeks before the fatal fire, until the violations were dealt with.
Relatives of those killed in the blaze brought two separate claims against the building’s owners and the city in 1993, seeking $5 million in damages from each.
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(Los Angeles Times staff writer Cindy Chang contributed to this report.)
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