A state appeals court panel Wednesday upheld a man's conviction for murdering his estranged wife, whose badly burned body was discovered at a homeless encampment in Granada Hills.
The three-justice panel from California's 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense's contention that there were errors in Hector Veloz's trial in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.
Veloz, now 53, was convicted in May 2022 of first-degree murder for the June 2017 slaying of Sandra Velasco.
Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter -- who sentenced Veloz to 26 years to life in state prison in August 2022 -- said then, "I have no doubt that you killed her."
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The judge told Veloz that he covered up his crime, "kept up the charade" and in the "ultimate insult" burned the 52-year-old woman's body beyond recognition.
"The way you treated your wife was despicable," Hunter said.
Along with the murder charge, jurors found true an allegation that Veloz personally used a knife in the attack against his wife of two years.
In its 35-page ruling, the appellate court panel wrote, "The jury's finding that defendant's murder of Sandra was premeditated and deliberate is supported by evidence of defendant's motive, planning and manner of killing. Regardless of whether defendant actually stood to benefit financially from Sandra's death, the jury could reasonably conclude defendant acted on his stated belief that it would be `good' if something happened to Sandra because he would `get her benefits.' And although some of defendant's actions immediately after the murder appear to have been improvised, the jury had reason to infer defendant planned to kill Sandra when he arranged to meet her in an isolated location armed with a knife."
In his closing argument during the trial, Deputy District Attorney John McKinney told jurors that the victim had changed the locks on her Panorama City home just over a week after an incident of domestic violence involving Veloz and that she was last seen on June 18, 2017, at a storage unit where she was trying to drop off clothing he had requested.
"This was on a brutal killing that went on for some time," the prosecutor told jurors.
The woman's body was dumped near a gas station and found two days later following a fire, and she was originally listed as a "Jane Doe" because her body was so badly burned, McKinney said. A good Samaritan subsequently found her belongings, including a criminal protective order, in another location, and two of the woman's adult children found her car in a Target parking lot near the storage facility, according to the prosecutor.
Of his then-missing wife, Veloz told his aunt that he wanted to get his wife's benefits through the U.S. Postal Service, where she was a longtime employee, McKinney told jurors.
The Los Angeles County coroner's office could not determine how the woman died, but the prosecution believes she was stabbed, given the discovery of a knife with the victim's blood on it and a large amount of blood in the back seat of her car, according to the prosecutor. She had also suffered blunt force trauma resulting in a skull fracture, the deputy district attorney told jurors.
"He's a cold, calculated killer," the prosecutor said, calling the evidence against the defendant "extremely powerful."
Veloz's trial attorney, Justine Esack, had countered that jurors should acquit her client.
"I am not here to tell you that he is a man of good character," she said, noting that the jury had heard "appalling things" Veloz said after his wife's death.
Those statements didn't "prove what his state of mind was when Sandra died in that hallway," the defense attorney told the panel.
"They chose to say that this was intentional," Esack said. "They chose to ignore the injuries to him. They chose to ignore the dynamics of this relationship."
Veloz's attorney alleged that the woman's two adult daughters -- who both work in law enforcement -- had a hand in trying to guide the case, and that it affected how law enforcement looked at the case.
The defense lawyer argued that the prosecution had failed to prove the elements of murder.
The judge rejected the defense's request to reduce Veloz's conviction from first-degree murder to second-degree murder.
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