One Monday night in 2013, a gunman walked into Rigoberto Dupre’s auto restore store in South Los Angeles and shot the 54-year-old within the again.
A bullet to the chest and two extra within the head completed him off. Dupre died shirtless and in bluejeans, mendacity on the ground of the enterprise that he dreamed of in the future increasing past the transformed home it occupied on Florence Avenue.
Dupre’s killing initially stumped detectives. The story, as advised by the prosecution, solely emerged years later — and with many questions left unanswered.
Dupre’s enterprise dealings set him on a “collision course” with the person accused of orchestrating his demise, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson mentioned Tuesday on the trial of David Nelson, 50, who has pleaded not responsible to costs of murdering and conspiracy to homicide Dupre.
Hoping to make some cash to put money into his auto restore enterprise, Dupre obtained concerned in a fraudulent cope with Nelson, Thompson advised the jury in his closing argument. In contrast to Dupre, an “unsophisticated” man who fastened vehicles six days per week, Nelson drove a Rolls-Royce and lived in a big house in Fontana, Thompson mentioned.
Nelson was attempting to steal fairness from an Inglewood condo complicated, the prosecutor mentioned. Posing because the property proprietor, Dupre obtained a mortgage towards the constructing’s worth for $375,000, which was then transformed into gold cash. Nelson’s lawyer, Jovan Blacknell, famous there was no proof that Nelson obtained any of the gold.
About two years after the mortgage was made, investigators for the financing firm confronted Dupre, who “laid all of it out,” Thompson mentioned. Proven a lineup of potential suspects, Dupre picked out Nelson as the person who put him as much as it, information present.
Thompson argued this sealed Dupre’s destiny. Dupre’s son would later inform detectives that Nelson confirmed up at his father’s enterprise and warned the son: “You recognize what may occur if he talks.”
In keeping with prosecutors, Nelson supplied an affiliate, Tina Alexander, $5,000 to orchestrate Dupre’s homicide. Alexander, 62, pleaded responsible to homicide and testified towards Nelson in change for a sentence of 15 years to life.
On paper, Alexander made a residing overseeing a medical billing firm, however in actuality, Blacknell advised the jury, she was a classy prison who had been “working against the law household” for 3 many years. Her previous included a federal financial institution theft conviction in 1997. Alexander’s husband and brother-in-law ran a crew that specialised in robbing check-cashing companies by chopping holes within the roof and rappelling down from the ceiling, Blacknell mentioned.
“Tina Alexander is an enchanting character,” he advised the jury. “Tina could possibly be the villain in a film. If someone made that film, individuals may not even imagine it.”
Prosecutors displayed textual content messages and telephone calls that confirmed Alexander performed surveillance of Dupre’s store and known as the enterprise to see what hours Dupre labored. She despatched {a photograph} of Dupre to her husband, Byron “Child” Alexander, whose telephone was being wiretapped by Ventura County sheriff’s detectives investigating the check-cashing robberies.
“See if bossman there,” he wrote in a textual content message to his spouse, who then known as Dupre and spoke for a minute and 10 seconds. After hanging up, Tina Alexander wrote: “Shall be there in 30 minutes.”
Their plans have been derailed when Ventura County detectives moved in to arrest Byron Alexander in reference to the check-cashing robberies. “I’m in a high-speed chase with the motherf—ing police,” he advised his spouse throughout the 10-mile pursuit, whereas driving the automobile that Tina Alexander had rented for the aim of murdering Dupre, Thompson advised the jury.
Byron Alexander was discovered responsible of false imprisonment and second-degree theft for a check-cashing heist, however his conviction would ultimately be reversed on attraction. He was not charged in Dupre’s demise.
After her husband’s arrest, Tina Alexander requested her brother-in-law to lease one other automobile. She parked it on 69th Road, just a few blocks from Dupre’s store, and left the keys inside, the prosecutor mentioned.
That night, a gunman walked into the store and killed Dupre with out saying a phrase, Thompson mentioned.
“Pockets was there, cash was there,” Dupre’s son advised ABC7 on the time, discounting theft as a motive. “He didn’t pat him down, nothing. He simply shot him and left.”
The prosecutor mentioned the gunman walked by means of the again of the store and climbed over a fence to the alley, the place he fled within the getaway automobile.
“From begin to end, this was skilled,” Thompson advised the jury.
Blacknell urged the jury to think about the questions that prosecutors had not answered. The spoils of the fraud that set the alleged conspiracy in movement — greater than $300,000 in gold cash — have been by no means recovered. In all of Nelson’s telephone, web and financial institution information, police and prosecutors didn’t discover a document of Nelson soliciting somebody to homicide Dupre after Byron Alexander was arrested.
And the largest unknown of all: The shooter has by no means been recognized, regardless of a $50,000 reward provide from the Los Angeles Metropolis Council to loosen the lips of potential witnesses.
“When does [Nelson] rent and recruit and pay this unknown killer?” Blacknell requested.
Jurors will start deliberating Wednesday.
