San Jose boy’s killer gunned down by FBI in Ohio, DA says

(KRON) — Investigators said they recently cracked a 33-year-old cold case and figured out what happened to a 14-year-old San Jose boy’s killer.

On September 28, 1991, 14-year-old Raymond Ojeda was shot to death during a gang-related confrontation in the Foxdale Loop area of San Jose, investigators said. The killer, Gerardo Aguilar, “disappeared” before police officers could arrest him, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

At the time of the murder, Aguilar was 15 years old. “A juvenile arrest warrant was issued for Aguilar, but local authorities were not able to locate him. The suspect disappeared,” SCCDAO wrote.

Earlier this year, a cold case investigator with SCCDAO, John Cary, decided to follow a “hunch” and follow up on a dead man in Ohio. The man had been killed in 2007 during a shootout with FBI agents in Ohio.

Cary did a background search and discovered that the San Jose murder suspect’s sister’s last name was Mulato. He found photographs of a man “who looked a lot like the suspect,” went by the name “Gerardo Mulato,” and resided in Forest Park, Ohio before his death.

“DNA analysis confirmed they were the same person. Aguilar had been living in Ohio under the (last) name Mulato for several years,” the DA’s office wrote.

Aguilar’s criminal activities did not end when he fled from California. In 2004 he was arrested for assaulting a victim with a baseball bat in Springfield, Ohio.

In 2007, the FBI began investigating Aguilar for drug trafficking crimes. Aguilar spotted FBI agents installing a tracking device on his car, and he mistakenly believed that the agents were car thieves, investigators said. Aguilar pulled out a gun and one of agents fatally shot him.

“It’s never too late to identify a killer. People may forget. But victims’ families and my Office do not,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said.

Rosen’s office has solved 20 homicide and 15 sexual assault cold cases within the past six years. The Cold Case Unit, established by Rosen in 2011, also works to locate and apprehend fugitives wanted in cold cases.

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