A former Las Vegas man found stabbed and shot to death in the front passenger seat of his car in a Carson parking lot in 2019 had been dating a woman accused of playing a part in his slaying along with her ex-husband, a prosecutor told a Torrance Superior Court jury in opening statements of trial Wednesday, June 5.
Roman Cerratos, 44, of Hawaii and Maricela Mercado, 45, of Redondo Beach face charges of murder and kidnapping in the slaying of 32-year-old Jeffrey Appel and the subsequent kidnapping of Mercado’s daughter, then-15-year-old Alora Benitez, in April 2019.
Cerratos faces a third charge of felon in possession of a firearm and allegations of personally using a firearm and a knife as well as commiting the murder during a kidnapping.
The case gained attention after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department put out an Amber Alert asking for help from the public in locating Benitez, while also identifying her mother and Cerratos as suspects in the slaying.
All three were found in Mexico months after Appel’s death and Benitez was reunited with her father, ABC Los Angeles reported in July 2019.
While prosecutors laid out the evidence they planned to present against Cerratos and Mercado, they did not tell a jury why the former married couple allegedly kidnapped Appel using a car registered in his name in the early morning hours of April 16, 2019, before assaulting him in the parking lot of the Torrance Civic Plaza Medical Center and later ditching him and his car near a dumpster behind a business in the 400 block of Carson Plaza Drive in Carson.
Two men noticed the white Audi sedan parked near the dumpster with blood on the passenger side, Prosecutor Matthew Pfeffer told jurors. They called police, who found Appel’s body stuffed upside down with his head on the floorboard under the glove compartment and a leg sticking up just above the passenger seat.
Appel had been shot three times and stabbed at least six times, Pfeffer told jurors.
The prosecutor told jurors that Cerratos and Mercado were at one point married, but separated. Mercado then went to Las Vegas, where she met Appel and the two started dating before moving to Redondo Beach so Appel could find job opportunities. Appel ended up landing a job at an accounting firm in Manhattan Beach, according to prosecutors and testimony presented Wednesday afternoon.
Cerratos’ attorney, Nancy Sperber, declined to give an opening statement until the defense portion of trial.
Mercado’s public defender, Steven Kwon, in a brief opening statement asked the jury to keep an open mind and pay attention to all the evidence. Of the case, Kwon told jurors they’d hear from Appel’s former boss, who would tell them Appel appeared agitated and distracted in the days leading up to the slaying.
During his opening statement, Pfeffer told the jury two people heard screaming coming from the parking lot of the Torrance Civic Plaza Medical Center along Torrance Boulevard east of Madrona Avenue, around 4 a.m. and at least one of them saw a man in a hoodie and dark pants punching another person in the front passenger seat of a white car. Moments later, the aggressor opened the rear right passenger door and got in, while a woman got out of the driver’s seat and “used her whole body weight to close the front passenger door.”
They then drove off, Pfeffer said. Torrance officers arrived and found a shoe and a knife on the ground, with Pfeffer telling the jury it would see DNA evidence showing blood from Appel and Cerratos on the weapon.
Mercado then drove the car to Carson, where a surveillance camera caught the car being parked near a dumpster, with a man prosecutors said matched Cerratos’ description grabbing items from the trunk and running toward the camera, while a woman prosecutors said matched the description of Mercado stepped out of the driver’s seat and began walking off camera.
They walked to the apartment of a friend of Mercado’s unannounced, where they showered and changed, Pfeffer said, adding that the friend noticed Cerratos’s hand was bleeding. The previous clothing was put in a plastic bag and placed in a dumpster at the complex, but it was picked up the following day when Cerratos, Mercado and Benitez showed up in Mercado’s BMW sedan, according to surveillance video played by prosecutors.
An Amber Alert was issued for Benitez later that day by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Found in the car with Appel were his ID, shell casings, a spent bullet and another unfired bullet that had a .45 stamp on it, Pfeffer said. Detectives would later search Mercado’s Redondo Beach apartment and find other ammunition with the same stamp.
Also at the scene, detectives found a blood trail going away from the car that they would later learn contained Cerratos’ DNA.
Cerratos and Mercado ditched the car in San Ysidro, where they removed custom plates, but left several luggage items containing, among other things, Mercado’s and Benitez’s passports. Also found was the shirt Cerratos changed into at the friend’s apartment along with a receipt of a purchase he had made at a Ross store in San Juan Capistrano.
Cerratos was found in Mexico two months after the killing and extradited back to the United States. Mercado and Benitez were found a month later in Chihuahua with help from the FBI, authorities said.
Mercado shared custody of her daughter with the girl’s father, whom authorities said had no involvement in the homicide.
The trial was anticipated to take more than a week to complete.