3 Convicted of Killing Teen Police Informant

A jury on Monday convicted two men and a woman of torturing and murdering Chad MacDonald, a Yorba Linda teenage police informant, capping a nearly two-year case that prompted a state law restricting the use of youths in undercover police work.

Defendants Michael Martinez, 21, Florence Noriega, 28, and Jose Ibarra, 19, could get the death penalty at the next phase of the trial, scheduled to continue next month in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The jury in Norwalk will decide whether the defendants deserve to die for committing a “special circumstance” murder that occurred after they kidnapped and robbed the 17-year-old Yorba Linda resident.

The three, all from Norwalk, were convicted of beating and strangling MacDonald, then dumping his body in a South Los Angeles alley in March 1998. The three also were convicted of kidnapping, robbing and trying to murder MacDonald’s then-16-year-old girlfriend. She was raped, shot and left for dead in Angeles National Forest but survived and provided key testimony at the trial. Noriega and Ibarra were found guilty of raping her; Martinez was acquitted on that charge.

MacDonald’s family members, including his mother, Cindy, said they were satisfied with the verdicts. At one point, the victim’s uncle, Chris Saroli, smiled approvingly at the jury.

“I think everyone in the courtroom realized they were guilty,” he said.

Cindy MacDonald, who wept quietly as the verdict was read, said afterward that the jury’s decision came as a great relief after nearly two years of uncertainty.

“We’re happy with the verdict but sad that we had to go through something like this,” she said, fighting back tears as she was escorted from the courthouse.

The verdicts, which took more than 20 minutes to read in a packed courtroom, prompted barely any reaction from the defendants.

Martinez, a slender man with a wispy mustache, broke into a slight smile. Noriega, her long hair draped over her shoulders, sighed slightly and slumped back in her chair. Ibarra coughed suddenly, then shifted in his seat, his ears reddening as the clerk read the first-degree murder conviction.

Attorneys for the defendants argued that the trio did not intend to kill MacDonald. Richard Leonard, Martinez’s attorney, said the murder convictions were expected and the real court battle lies ahead.

“What this case is all about is whether they get death or life without parole,” Leonard said.

The case proved to be far more than a murder trial. It led to broad condemnation of the Brea Police Department and a new state law that requires police to get permission from a judge before using youths aged 13 through 17 as informants. It also led Cindy MacDonald to file a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against Brea and Yorba Linda, a case that is pending.

The murder occurred after MacDonald went with his girlfriend to visit a ramshackle drug house on Halcourt Avenue in Norwalk. MacDonald, a handsome onetime Little Leaguer, had agreed to work as an informant for the Brea police after he was arrested in January 1998 on charges of methamphetamine possession.

Brea police officials have said the teenager worked as an informant only once--on a drug buy--and had stopped working for them weeks before the murder.

To MacDonald’s killers, however, he apparently was a “snitch” who needed to be taught a lesson.

At the trial, Ibarra’s defense attorney, Forrest Latiner, described MacDonald as “a 112-pound weakling with a toxic level of meth in his system” who died from what his attackers meant to be a nonfatal beating.

In powerful testimony early in the trial, the girlfriend said Noriega accused them of being police informants before the group bound and began beating them. She said Noriega, referring to her, told the men at one point: “She’ll take five bullets, so load it all the way up.”

The girl, whose identity was not released, was raped, shot in the face and left for dead in a culvert near the San Gabriel reservoir. MacDonald’s battered and strangled body was found in an alley six days later.

Family members would not say whether they want the jury to return death sentences for the defendants. Saroli, Cindy MacDonald’s brother, suggested that anything the jury decided would be satisfactory.

“Whatever the Lord above wants, that’s what we want,” he said.

Times staff writer Hudson Sangree contributed to this report.