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E-mail StorySearch warrants reveal how murder suspects were tracked down
| Saturday, May 10 2008 3:30 PM
Last Updated: Monday, May 12 2008 7:25 AM
Almost one year after her pregnant cousin was killed, Jennifer Corral burst with tears when told deputies arrested three men for the slaying.
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Vanessa Alcala with her son, Jadanie.
Vanessa Alcala, 19, was killed in April of last year in a southeast Bakersfield neighborhood.
Alcala’s 13-week-old fetus also died.
“Finally they got caught,” Corral said. “I was so happy.”
The details of how detectives nabbed their suspects was detailed in a recently unsealed search warrant.
Investigators tracked down the suspects using everything from a discarded cell phone to a MySpace page.
Corey Ray Johnson, Joseph Kevin Dixon and David Lee Jr. were arrested in March and each are facing three first-degree murder charges. They are accused of murdering Alcala, her fetus and 21-year-old James Oliver Wallace, according to court documents.
The suspects are believed to be Crips gang members.
The shooting took place on April 19, 2007, on McNew Court in southeast Bakersfield. Alcala was sitting in a parked car when two men walked up and opened fire at the car and a nearby house.
Alcala was shot in the head.
Wallace was shot in the torso.
The suspects ran away.
One of the people injured in the shooting, but not killed, was Anthony Lyons, a member of the “Stroller Boys” which is a clique of the “East Side Crips,” according to the search warrant.
Lyons’ gang has conflicts with the suspects’ gang affiliations, according to the search warrant.
While searching the area of the shooting, deputies said they found a black pea coat, a white USA basketball jersey, a Boston Red Sox cap and a cell phone.
The day after the shooting, a person called the cell phone asking for “Dodo.” That was the nickname of one of the suspects, Joseph Dixon, according to a criminal database.
A photograph on the cell phone also matched Dixon, according to the search warrant. Dixon was out on parole at the time of the shooting.
People who know Dixon also connected the suspect to the cell phone and his nickname, the search warrant said.
Eventually the deputies talked to the girlfriend of Corey Johnson.
She told them that Johnson, Dixon and David Lee Jr. did a shooting on April 19, according to the search warrant. Lee had driven the two suspects to the shooting, the girlfriend said.
A few days after the shooting, Johnson was restless and said he thought he had been shooting at gang members in the vehicle, according to the search warrant.
Johnson said police don’t care when “(black people) kill (black people)” but this was bad because it was a pregnant Hispanic lady, the search warrant said.
The girlfriend, who said Johnson had beat her, told a sergeant that she had bought a pea coat for Johnson. The brand she bought matched the brand of coat found at the scene of the shooting.
The girlfriend also provided photographs of Johnson’s birthday where he is seen wearing a Boston Red Sox cap and a white USA basketball jersey, according to the search warrant.
Investigators also found Lee’s MySpace Web site. He claimed to be a South Side Crip on his account, the search warrant said.
Johnson, Dixon and Lee are accused of first-degree murder, attempted murder, shooting at an inhabited dwelling and other charges, according to court records.
The suspects are scheduled to appear in court in August.