Since then, Landa has helped various California police departments bring 70 murder cases to Mexico, 14 so far in 1987, more than in any previous year. About 20 of the cases have worked their way through Mexican courts, he said, all resulting in convictions, although one of those was thrown out on appeal.

“Now it’s sort of snowballing,” he said. “More and more detectives are finding out that this is a way to go with their cases.”

One benefit for U.S. authorities is financial. Mexico pays for prosecuting the cases, and police officials estimate that it costs American taxpayers less than $1,000 in travel and other expenses to bring a case there, an amount that pales in comparison to the costs of jailing, prosecuting and defending a murder suspect in Los Angeles.

“You are probably talking about saving thousands of dollars on every case,” Ross said.

But Angel Saad, the Baja attorney general, said the arrangement does not just help the U.S. agencies.

“It is a two-way street with positive results for both countries,” he said. “For Mexico, it signifies its willingness to punish its citizens that commit crimes in foreign countries.”

A more tangible way the relationship pays off for Mexico, police say, is when the foreign prosecution unit, acting on tips from Mexican police, locates Mexicans in Los Angeles who are suspected of crimes in their own country. So far this year, 13 such suspects have been arrested by immigration authorities in Los Angeles as illegal aliens and returned to Mexico with the help of the unit. Because they are illegal aliens, they can be shipped back without lengthy extradition proceedings.

Although most of its time has been spent on murder cases in Mexico, the foreign prosecution unit has been used on occasion in child abuse, robbery and auto theft investigations. And its officers have pursued murder cases in other countries where laws allow prosecution of foreign crimes. Two cases have been brought in El Salvador, one in France and one investigation is pending in Honduras.

The crimes that lead the officers across the border are quite varied, involving both Mexican and American victims.

Lorraine Kiefer, 70, was a well-liked Van Nuys widow and retired real-estate broker who worked without pay at an American Cancer Society thrift shop. In 1980, she had married Gilberto Flores, a longtime acquaintance who was 38 years her junior. Four years later, police said, Flores hired a second man, Andreas Hernandez Santiago, to kill her for $5,000.

After detectives unraveled the Oct. 2, 1984, killing, the case was filed in Mexico, where the two men, both Mexican nationals, had fled. Santiago was arrested in Oaxaca and later convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Flores is still being sought.

In one of the first cases handled by the unit in 1985, Juan Francisco Rocha, 36, was arrested in Monterrey, Mexico, for the killing in Hollywood of his girlfriend, Brenda Joyce Abbud, a decade earlier. She had been doused with paint thinner and set on fire.

“Many of the cases have strong impacts on their communities,” Zorrilla said.

The Dec. 8, 1980, killing of Lisa Ann Rosales was such a case, prompting the Los Angeles City Council to offer a$25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. A local high school started a college scholarship in Lisa’s name and an elementary school named a garden after her.

There were few solid leads until a woman called police anonymously in 1985, saying her conscience bothered her and that she wanted them to know that Castro, who worked as a maintenance man at the Rosales home, was the killer. That lead gave the case a new focus, and police said more evidence was uncovered against Castro.

Castro, who had returned to Mexico weeks after the killing, confessed shortly after he was arrested in Mexicali in 1986, according to police in both countries.

Mary Kellel-Sophiea says homicide investigators wrongfully tried to pin her husband’s slaying on her. The detectives still believe she’s guilty.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

September 15, 1991

Mary Kellel-Sophiea says she is on trial for murder. But it was her choice.

For more than two months last year, she faced a possible death sentence after being charged with the murder of her estranged husband. On Jan. 31, 1990, Gregory Sophiea was stabbed to death in his bed in the Shadow Hills home that the couple had shared for five years.

But then a prosecutor dropped the charges against her, telling a judge he did not have enough evidence to proceed with the case in court.

A year and a half later, the additional evidence has not been found. But Kellel-Sophiea is back in court. She is suing her accusers, charging two Los Angeles police detectives with violating her rights by arresting her without cause and conspiring to frame her with a murder she did not commit.

The two-week-old civil trial before a jury in U.S. District Court has unfolded much like that of a murder trial.

Detectives testified about their investigation and identified an 18-year-old transient who has been convicted of the murder and who they believe conspired with Kellel-Sophiea to kill her husband. A medical examiner discussed the details of the autopsy. A next-door neighbor told the jury about finding the dead man and the blood-spattered butcher knife.

Though no death sentence rides on the jury’s verdict, the 10-member panel will, in effect, be asked to cast judgment on Kellel-Sophiea, deciding whether she has been wrongfully pursued by two obsessed investigators or possibly is a killer who has not only gotten away with her crime but is now seeking monetary damages from her pursuers.

Kellel-Sophiea, 40, now lives in Long Beach. She is seeking unspecified damages from Detectives Woodrow Parks and Gary Milligan. She believes the jury will exonerate her by finding that the detectives wrongfully arrested her. She said such a verdict will finally help end the suspicion that surrounds her.

“If I was guilty, why wouldn’t I just go on with my life and thank God I had gotten away with it?” she asked in an interview last week. “Why would I go through with this trial? It’s like a murder trial. If I was guilty, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

The lawsuit focuses on what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 31 at the Sophiea family’s Orcas Avenue house and whether detectives assigned to the case correctly and honestly interpreted the evidence left by a killer. Kellel-Sophiea claims they did not.

“They threw this woman on a freight train to hell, and they still are trying to shovel coal on the fire,” said Ken Clark, one of her attorneys.

According to testimony at the trial, Gregory Sophiea and his wife argued on the last night of his life.

The couple had separated after 10 years of marriage but had agreed to meet at the house they owned – and where Gregory, a salesman and caterer, was staying – to discuss its sale.

Kellel-Sophiea, a former advertising executive, testified that the couple argued over furniture she needed for her new apartment in Long Beach, and related financial matters.