Sentencing set in Sky Valley kidnap-murder trial

A Cathedral City man convicted of kidnapping a 21-year-old man, shooting him in the head and leaving his body at a remote desert area in Sky Valley four years ago is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.

Prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty against 30-year-old Andrew Michael De Los Santos, so state law mandates he be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the death of Shane Ayala in August 2011. His accomplice, Luis Raul Diaz Jr., received a similar sentence at the end of his trial in November 2014.

While the punishment for De Los Santos may bring a measure of closure to Ayala’s loved ones, it also brings to an end something of an investigative marathon.

“This was one of my most challenging cases because all we had were the charred remains,” said Martin Alfaro, the sheriff’s homicide investigator who led the team that cracked the case.

A family of hikers found charred bones on Dec. 19, 2011, in a desert area of Sky Valley, nearly three miles away from the nearest paved road. Alfaro suspected the remains were human, but the sun was setting and a proper canvassing of the scene wouldn’t occur until the next morning.

The remains appeared to have been strewn in a line about 100 yards long, suggesting the bones had been moved by foraging coyotes. A team that included cadaver dogs and a sheriff’s forensic anthropologist gathered all of the bones they could locate, the most important being a two-by-two inch skull fragment and piece of lower jaw.

The skull fragment contained a small hole that Alfaro recognized as a bullet hole. The jawbone would allow investigators to positively identify their victim using dental records, once they could figure out whose dental records to request.

A forensic anthropologist assembled the recovered bones like a jigsaw puzzle and concluded the victim was male, 18 to 25 and between 5 feet 8 and 5 feet 10.

Alfaro’s team conducted a database search for all missing persons who fit that description and found just one: Ayala, who went missing four months before the remains were found. The team began interviewing Ayala’s family and friends and soon got their first solid lead.

Ashley Prieto, a close friend of Ayala, told investigators she saw De Los Santos at a party in October 2011, and asked him what became of Ayala. De Los Santos, she told investigators, bragged about having taken Ayala out to the desert and shooting him.

Authorities also interviewed Christina Arthur, a mutual close friend of Ayala and Prieto, and the girlfriend of Diaz. Arthur told investigators that Diaz became oddly defensive when she asked him about Ayala’s whereabouts.

Alfaro’s team then interviewed Waldo Barker, a mutual friend of Diaz and Ayala. Barker told investigators that he visited De Los Santos’ condo in the Cathedral Canyon Country Club in Cathedral City, sometime in late August of 2011, where he saw Ayala with his face badly beaten, blood on the carpet near the entryway to the unit and signs that the front door had been kicked in.

On March 29, 2012, investigators felt they had enough evidence to move in on De Los Santos, so they simultaneously served search warrants at several locations and picked him up. During a search of the Cathedral City condo, deputies found indications that the doorway had recently been repaired. Then came the watershed moment.

“The moment was when we pulled the carpet back and found the bleach stains,” Alfaro said.

Back at the office, Alfaro sat down for a marathon interview with De Los Santos, who spent the first three hours denying he knew anything about Ayala’s disappearance before giving investigators everything they would need to secure a conviction.

De Los Santos told investigators he suspected Ayala of orchestrating a burglary of the Cathedral City condo and became enraged when the victim wouldn’t admit it. He and Diaz beat Ayala until he defecated on himself, then ordered him to take a shower, don a hoodie and sunglasses to cover his busted lip and swollen, bruised eye, then ordered the victim to walk quietly through the condo complex to Diaz’s car. The three then drove to Sky Valley, where Ayala was fatally shot.

De Los Santos said he returned to the scene sometime later to set fire to the remains. The fact the bones were burned had never been made public.