Decades later, accused killer identified in death of 10-year-old girl, CA cops say
_fitted.png "Detectives were able to use DNA technology and genealogy techniques to identify the man who took Angelica Ramirez from a Visalia swap meet 28 years ago. (Screenshot from Facebook)")
After nearly three decades, California officials have identified a man they say killed a 10-year-old girl who was taken from a swap meet in 1994.
Detectives were able to use DNA technology and genealogy techniques to identify Ramiro Villegas as the man who took Angelica Ramirez from a Visalia swap meet and later raped and killed her, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said at a news conference Thursday, June 30.
Villegas died in Mexico in 2014, Boudreaux said.
“If there’s any solace, we know that he is dead. And I think that he has a special place in a certain place. But we do know that Angelica is in heaven,” Boudreaux said.
The family, though, feels justice was cut short, according to Boudreaux.
“At least now we have a face to the killer. We don’t have to worry about this person being out there, doing this to someone else,” Angelica’s sister said at the news conference.
Angelica went missing on March 3, 1994, Boudreaux said. She was watching her three younger siblings at her parents’ swap meet booth when she left to use the restroom. She never returned.
Shortly after, Angelica was reported missing and a search ensued, according to Boudreaux.
“I remember that day, because I also was assigned to the search, and I remember that desperate feeling we had in trying to locate this young girl,” Boudreaux said.
Two days later, a farm labor worker found Angelica’s body in a canal, Boudreaux said.
“Since that day, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office has had detectives assigned to this case, dedicated to finding justice for Angelica and her family,” Boudreaux said.
Over the past three decades, investigators have spent “thousands of investigative hours,” followed up on thousands of leads, interviewed more than 200 suspects and conducted nearly 1,000 interviews, according to Boudreaux.
“This case has gripped each of us,” Boudreaux said.
Police had collected DNA from the scene and submitted it more than 100 times to databases with no hit, Boudreaux said.
After partnering with the FBI forensic genealogy unit and contracting with a private lab that conducted a genetic profile of the suspect in February, police had a breakthrough, according to Sgt. Joshua Lowry.
The DNA profile was uploaded to two public online databases that individuals use to trace family lineages, Lowry said. In March, investigators got a match.
“From that genetic match, we knew we were close within two generations of where the suspect would fall in that family tree,” Lowry said.
It led investigators to a family in Southern California with five male siblings.
“I knew that the suspect was going to be one of those five siblings,” Lowry said.
DNA samples were collected from four of the five siblings, which were not a match, leaving only Villegas.
Villegas had a long criminal history and “had been in and out of the criminal justice system since 1991,” when he was arrested and charged with fighting in public, according to Boudreaux.
He later was deported to Mexico. He suffered from a long-term lung disease and died of complications from Valley fever in 2014.
“Solving her [Angelica’s] murder took longer than anyone ever wanted and, quite frankly, expected,” Boudreaux said. “But detectives were determined not to let her memory fade and bring Angelica Ramirez justice, no matter how long it took.”
This story was originally published July 1, 2022 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Decades later, accused killer identified in death of 10-year-old girl, CA cops say."
