ADRIAN RIOS - 17 yo -(2009) Hemet CA

HEMET: Witnesses told police of disposing of body

Published: 18 October 2011 01:02 PM

The brother-in-law of the teen accused of killing a friend and burning him in a bonfire told police his relative confessed to the crime, according to court testimony this morning.
Rene Lopez, 23, testified Tuesday morning in the murder trial of Jose Campos, who is charged with shooting Adrian Rios, then burning and dismembering his body in a backyard bonfire in Hemet.
Rios' and Campos' families sat solemnly on opposite sides of the French Valley courtroom as witnesses described how the body was mutilated.
Lopez refused to answer questions about the killing, repeatedly saying he didn't remember helping get rid of the body. He pleaded guilty last year to accessory to murder and was sentenced to felony probation.
Prosecutors played a video of a police interview in which Lopez told detectives that he visited Campos, 19, the day after the killing and saw the burned body. Campos asked him for a saw and the location of the nearest lake.
Lopez said Campos described shooting Rios, 17, in the eye after he got offended during freestyle rapping, according to the video. He told Lopez he burned the teen's body in a backyard fire pit.
“He said they were going to have a barbecue ... He started burning his clothes, but he wasn't burning quickly enough,” Lopez said in the video. “He poured gas and beer on him. It took his buzz away so he went inside to get more beer while they buried him.”
Another witness, Ivan Ruiz, testified Tuesday that he heard Campos shoot Rios during an argument. He found Campos standing over the body. Ruiz also pleaded guilty to an accessory to murder charge.
“I was hoping it was just a dream, but it wasn't,” Ruiz said. “I didn't want to end up in the same place so I was helping. Otherwise I would be done, too.”
Ruiz said he helped drag the body to the backyard. Campos instructed him to get a gas can while Campos went to get McDonald’s hamburgers, Ruiz said.
They returned to the home where they dug a shallow grave, stripped Rios' body and set it on fire, according to Ruiz’s testimony. The flames shot up, singeing Campos’ face, Ruiz said. The body burned for about an hour, including when Campos' family came home, Ruiz said.
Lopez told detectives in the video that Campos’ mother asked him the next day to help get rid of the body.He followed Campos to Canyon Lake, according to the video interview.
In the video, Lopez said he felt sick to his stomach when he saw Rios' charred dismembered body with his hands folded across his chest. He said the body smelled like “cut-up goats.”
Lopez told police he asked Campos if he dumped the body in the lake, to which he answered: “I chopped him up and scattered it. Too bad little homey had to go.”
In December, Lopez led detectives to the same part of the lake where a Riverside County sheriff's dive team recovered the skeletal remains.
During his testimony on the witness stand, Lopez said he was high during police’s video interview and didn't remember Campos telling him about the killing or seeing the body. He said he pleaded guilty to aiding in the crime even though he was not guilty.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/hemet/hemet-headlines-index/20111018-hemet-witnesses-told-police-of-disposing-of-body.ece

HEMET: Murder suspect's girlfriend testifies she remembers nothing

Published: 19 October 2011 02:32 PM

The girlfriend of a murder suspect who fled to Mexico with him last year said she remembers nothing and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Felicia Sharp was called to testify Wednesday against her boyfriend, Jose Campos. Campos is accused of shooting 17-year-old Adrian Rios, burning his body in his backyard, dismembering the remains and throwing them in Canyon Lake.
Sharp, now 18, pleaded guilty last year to accessory to murder. She was sentenced to six months in juvenile hall and felony probation.
She admitted in juvenile court that she cleaned up the blood, stoked the fire while Rios’ body was burning and lied to police about being at the home on Bluejay Way in Hemet on Nov. 15, 2009.
Days after the killing, Sharp was interviewed by police but released due to lack of evidence.
Two weeks later, Campos and Sharp fled to Mexico. They were captured by U.S. marshals in March and returned to Riverside County to face trial.
During Sharp’s testimony Wednesday morning in a French Valley courtroom, Judge Mark E. Petersen declared her a hostile witness.
Sharp refused to identify Campos sitting in the courtroom and answered nearly every question during her 45-minute testimony with, “I don't know. I don't remember.”
Sharp said she was diagnosed with PTSD in October 2010 in a Riverside County facility and didn't recognize anyone in the courtroom.
Prosecutors played a jail phone call from last month of Sharp telling Campos she loved him. Phone records show they've talked regularly since his arrest.
Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky told her PTSD causes sufferers to have vivid memories of traumatic events.
“Do you realize you picked the wrong illness to fake today?”
Sharp said she was suffering from a mental disorder.
Prosecutors played a video of Sharp talking to police after she was returned from Mexico in 2010.
“At what point did you know it was Jose that shot him?”
“Well I don't know. I just ... I just figured ... Just I knew something went bad,” Sharp answered in the video.
Afterward in court, she said she didn't recognize herself in the recording.
At one point Strunsky asked Sharp, “Do you think a 17-year-old shot, burned, cut up into pieces and thrown into a lake would stand out to you?”
“I don't know. I don't remember.”
Prosecutors said the night of Rios’ death, Campos, Sharp, Rios and another friend, Ivan Ruiz, went to Campos' home to watch a football game. After an afternoon of heavy drinking and smoking marijuana, they were freestyle rapping in Campos' room when a fight broke out and Rios punched Ruiz, giving him a bloody nose.
Ruiz testified Wednesday that he left to wash his face and heard a gunshot about 30 minutes later. He said he returned to find Campos standing over the body.
Ruiz said Campos ordered Sharp to clean up the blood in his room while they dragged the body outside and left to get gasoline. They poured gas over the body while Sharp placed wood beneath the fire to keep the fire going.
Campos' attorney, C.R. McReynolds, has argued that there was no witness to the shooting and Campos did not kill Rios.
McReynolds accused Ruiz of fabricating the story in order to reach a plea deal on an accessory charge.
“You felt disrespected when he punched you and you shot him didn't you?”
“No, that's not true,” Ruiz answered.
During Strunsky’s questioning of Sharp, he played a recording where police asked her whether she though Campos or Ruiz shot Rios.
“So why is it that you think Jose shot him instead of Ivan?” police asked.
“I just do.”
“And at no point during this escapade, you didn't ask him. Is that what you're telling me?”
“I heard him. I heard him talking about it,” Sharp said in the video. “I don't think they really asked him, but he said yeah I —”
“That he shot Adrian?”
“No, he just told me.”

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/hemet/hemet-headlines-index/20111019-hemet-murder-suspect-s-girlfriend-testifies-she-remembers-nothing.ece?ssimg=351369#ssStory351371

HEMET: Defense blames accomplice in burned body killing

Published: 24 October 2011 01:12 PM

A Hemet teen denied Monday shooting and dismembering a friend during testimony at his murder trial, blaming a rap-crew cohort who was sentenced to probation last year as part of a plea bargain as an accessory.
Jose Campos, 19, took the stand in a French Valley courtroom and said he did not kill 17-year-old Adrian Rios, but did help burn the body in a backyard bonfire. Campos said 18-year-old former Hemet resident Ivan Ruiz, who pleaded guilty to accessory to murder in 2010, shot and killed Rios. Ruiz, who cannot be charged in the case, testified last week.
Campos is charged with murder in the Nov. 15, 2009, killing at his parents’ home on Bluejay Way in Hemet. He faces 50 years to life if convicted. The jury could start deliberating by the end of this week.
“I heard a gunshot and turned back real quick. I asked Ivan, 'Why'd you shoot him, dog?’” Campos said. “I was thinking, ‘Why did Ivan shoot Adrian? What would happen if my parents came home early, or if the neighbors heard the gunshot or if the police came?’”
Campos said Rios suggested burying the body outside, but Campos told him he couldn't do that in his parents’ backyard.
“How do you feel now?” his defense attorney C.R. McReynolds asked Campos.
“Remorse, of course.”
“Do you wish you handled it differently?”
“Yes,” Campos said softly. “I couldn't think straight. My focus was on the body and how to get it out of there. Ivan mentioned burning the body was the only way to make it disappear.”
Both the Campos and Rios families sat in the courtroom during the testimony. Campos' mother and stepfather, who returned home from church on the day of the killing to find the teens burning the body, read Bible passages aloud before the trial.
Prosecutors said Campos shot Rios after he punched Ruiz.
Ruiz testified he left the room to clean up a bloody nose when he heard a gunshot. He said he came back to find Campos standing over the body. Several other witnesses said Campos told them he shot Rios.
After the shooting, Campos said, Ruiz began digging a hole to burn the body. Ruiz asked for gasoline and said he was hungry and needed to sober up, Campos testified. The teens had been drinking wine coolers and beer and smoking pot, he said.
The boys rode bikes to buy the gasoline and Campos bought burgers at McDonald’s. During cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky played a surveillance video of Campos eating a burger while Ruiz filled a gas tank.
“You testified you were really upset your friend Adrian was dead,” Strunsky said. “But not 10 minutes after you took the body of your friend to the back patio, you were hungry for a McDonald's hamburger? Does it look like you’re not sorry your friend is dead?”
“Can you see the expression on my face in that video?” Campos said.
“Does shooting someone in the head make you hungry?”
“I didn't shoot anyone in the head,” Campos said, adding that he wasn’t hungry.
The three boys met at the San Jacinto Regional Learning Center and were part of a rapping crew called Nemesis. On the day of the slaying, the teens were freestyle rapping when Ruiz said something about a San Diego gang that offended Rios, who punched Ruiz in response. Campos said he tried to make peace before Ruiz shot him without warning.
Campos said he and Ruiz used a plastic carpet runner to drag the body to the backyard. Campos said he was worried about neighbors seeing the fireball that erupted when Ruiz doused the body in gasoline and set it ablaze.
While the body was burning, Campos said Ruiz described how he had cut up goats to make them cook faster. So he said Ruiz hacked at Rios’ body with a shovel, trying to cut it into pieces.
Campos' family came home from church while the body was burning. His now 15-year-old sister testified Monday that she ran to the backyard thinking they were cooking s'mores, but saw the feet in the fire and ran back inside.
Jose Seym, Campos' stepfather, told his family to pack their belongings and leave.
The next day Campos called his brother-in-law, Rene Lopez, to dispose of the body. Lopez and his friends stole a pickup belonging to Campos’ parents and drove it to Lopez's house in Perris. Lopez set Rios’ body on fire again in his backyard, Campos said. A month later, Lopez showed police where he said Campos threw the remains into Canyon Lake.
Ruiz's mother drove Campos and his girlfriend, Felicia Sharp, to the Mexican border, Campos said. She gave him $100 and took him to a place where he could meet relatives on the other side, he said. Campos and Sharp stayed in Mexico for four months before they were captured by Mexican authorities and U.S. marshals.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/hemet/hemet-headlines-index/20111024-hemet-defense-blames-accomplice-in-burned-body-killing.ece

HEMET: Mother confronts murder suspect in video

As a grieving mother accused him of shooting, dismembering and burning her son, a Hemet teen charged with murder smiled and told her that he forgave her in a video screened Tuesday in a French Valley courtroom.
During cross-examination, prosecutors aired the video of a police interview with Jose Campos and Elodea Lopez, the mother of 17-year-old Adrian Rios, whose charred remains were found in Campos' parents’ backyard. Lopez sat in the courtroom wearing a T-shirt bearing her son's picture.
On Monday, Campos said an accomplice, Ivan Ruiz, fired the fatal shot.
On Nov. 17, 2009 — two days after Rios was killed — Lopez reported her son missing and found her son’s bloody shoes and burned clothing at Campos' home on Bluejay Way in Hemet.
She confronted Campos during a police interrogation after he was captured while hiding in Mexico.
“And you think you're smart because you try to cut my son into pieces,” Lopez said in a scene from the video. “Did you forget his shoes in the backyard?”
The video showed Campos leaning his head back, smiling and saying: “Oh my goodness. Man, is that it? ... Oh my God. I wasn't even there at home. ... I left there, OK?”
“You killed my son! ... He is in your house, and part of his body is in your house,” Lopez said.
“You don't know if I did it,” Campos said. “You weren't there. ... Nobody was there.
“The day you know who did it, that's the day when you'll say, ‘I shouldn't have told him that,’ ” Campos said. “And that day I'll still tell you, hey, I forgive you for accusing me. Because I have to forgive just like Jesus forgives.”
After airing the video, Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky told Campos he didn't look scared, but appeared arrogant.
Campos said he was defending himself from the boy's mother who told him he would “burn in hell and … suffer.”
During his testimony, Campos said Ruiz shot and killed Rios and then suggested burning the body in the backyard. The remains were found a month later, thrown into Canyon Lake.
Strunsky asked Campos why he helped burn Rios’ body instead of calling the police or an ambulance.
“I thought it was the only way to get rid of him that night,” Campos said. “I felt like I had no other choice. If I called police I risked my family going to jail. Whether you tell them you didn't do it or not, they still want to take you to jail.”
A week later, Ruiz's mother drove Campos and his girlfriend to the Mexican border and gave Campos $100. During the next four months, he rented a room and got a job in a meat market until he was arrested by Mexican authorities and U.S. marshals.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/hemet/hemet-headlines-index/20111025-hemet-mother-confronts-murder-suspect-in-video.ece

Hemet, Calif., Teen Convicted in Burning, Dismemberment of Friend
Leezel Tanglao
Yesterday, 7:18 PM

A southern California teenager was convicted today of dismembering and then burning his 17-year-old friend’s body in November 2009.

A Riverside County jury found Jose Manuel Campos, guilty of murdering Adrian Rios, 17.

Campos, 19, and three other people were at a home in the city of Hemet, Calif., to view a football game on Nov. 15, 2009.

Officials said Rios got into an altercation with Ivan Ruiz, who was in the house, where Rios “punched Ruiz in the nose,” according to a Riverside County District Attorney news release.

Campos then later shot Rios with a .22 caliber rifle, according to prosecutors.

Campos and Ruiz took Rios’ body and lit it on fire and later placed it into a shallow grave in the Campos’ backyard, authorities said.

Neighbors initially told KABC that they noticed a foul smell the night the teens came together to watch the game.

Officials also recovered human remains from Canyon Lake that matched Rios’ profile.

Campos was arrested in connection with the murder after he fled to Mexico.

He faces as much as 50 years to life in state prison and is expected back in court for formal sentencing in December, according to the Riverside County District Attorney news release.

Ruiz was sentenced to 180 days in jail and three years of probation after he pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crime.

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=14830937&sid=9326665&cid=7623874

Teen given 50-yr sentence for killing, burning friend

Friday, December 16, 2011

MURRIETA, Calif. -- A Hemet teen was sentenced Friday to 50 years to life in state prison for murdering his friend and later dismembering and burning the body in 2009.

Jose Manuel Campos, 19, was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder and an additional 25 years to life for personal use of a firearm.

Campos was convicted by a Riverside County jury on Oct. 27, 2011, of the murder of 17-year-old Adrian Rios.

Rios, who was 17 at the time of his death, was murdered after he watched a football game at Campos' home Nov. 15, 2009. Rios was involved in an altercation with Ivan Ruiz, a friend of Campos'. Campos joined in on the fight and fatally shot Rios with a rifle.

It was reported that the boys had also been drinking and smoking marijuana that night.

At some point Rios body was dismembered.


Campos and Ruiz later burned Rios' body in a makeshift grave near a fire pit in Campos' backyard.

Ruiz pled guilty to being an accessory and was sentenced to 180 days in county jail and three years of formal probation.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/inland_empire&id=8470271