Andrea DelVesco // 433
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What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Big thank you to Alloy for recommending today's case. I am surprised I didn't hear about this story when it happened because...

I was living in LA and I'm the same age as her. And so this happened really closely. I had friends that went to the school that she was at. So I can't believe I didn't hear about this until recently. Again, thanks to Aloy. I mean, this story is unreal. Yeah, I was actually very surprised to hear that this was in our neck of the woods because, you know, we don't...

typically cover a lot of cases in Los Angeles. I know we've actually been getting some requests for more. So if you guys have any LA cases or any cases in general, please send us an email to goingwestpodcast at gmail.com. We have a massive list, but we're always accepting new cases and we try to get back to everybody. So thank you in advance. All right, guys, this is episode 433 of Going West. So let's get into it.

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That's N-O-O-M dot com. In September of 2015, a Los Angeles apartment building full of UCLA sorority sisters caught on fire. Luckily, no one was killed in the flames, but to the surprise of its residents, a 21-year-old woman's remains were revealed inside.

The manner of death was ruled homicide after it was determined that she had been stabbed 19 times. As police reviewed surveillance footage in the area and interviewed locals, a faraway suspect emerged. This is the story of Andrea Delvesco. ♪♪

Andrea Lauren Delvesco, or Andy, a lot of people called her Andy, but we're going to call her Andrea, was born on June 29th, 1994 to parents Leslie and Arthur Delvesco and grew up as the middle child of three siblings alongside an older brother named James and a younger sister named Alexis. And she and her siblings were actually born in Chicago, but spent most of their childhoods in Austin, Texas. That is where they mostly grew up.

Her mom, Leslie, described their close relationship by saying, quote, she was an angel on earth. She would just look you right in the eye when you were talking to her and you knew she saw into your soul.

Andrea was described by family as a loving and supportive friend who was known to many as a best friend. She had this very gentle and empathetic soul, and Andrea loved to travel, and she also loved animals. She attended St. Andrew's Episcopal School from elementary school until graduation in high school, and there she played on both the varsity field hockey and lacrosse teams.

She was also a National Commended Merit Scholar and was recognized for her academic achievements in the subjects of English, Spanish, and Latin. As Andrea was considering colleges, her mom Leslie said later that she hoped her daughter would attend the University of Chicago because her older brother James was already there and, you know, they could kind of look out for each other. She thought it would be cool if both of her kids or two of her kids went to the same college, naturally. But...

Andrea kind of felt called in a different direction and instead headed to sunny Los Angeles to attend the University of California, Los Angeles, located in the very cute and bustling neighborhood of Westwood. And Andrea was just an incredibly emotionally intelligent person who really understood others. So this made her want to major in psychology with a second major in Spanish.

She quickly got used to life at UCLA, joining the Pi Beta Phi sorority and making a ton of friends. She was also in the Honor Society and participated in the National Charity League. So she was not only an incredibly bright and amazing person, but she was also incredibly intelligent. Her college friends laughed as they remembered her bold and sometimes even ironic sense of style and her very sharp sense of humor.

While attending school, Andrea adopted a rescue dog, a small blonde chihuahua mix that she named Shay Panda, who was her constant companion. At the end of the summer of 2015, Andrea was heading into her senior year at UCLA and was looking forward to traveling after graduation. She hoped to combine her love of adventure with her desire to help people, so she was even considering the Peace Corps.

But that summer, she had her first run-in with the law, which was something that was completely new for Andrea. On June 4th, 2015, she was arrested for selling ecstasy, LSD, psilocybin, which is mushrooms, and methamphetamine. She was quickly released on bail, and a hearing was scheduled for later that summer.

But according to her friends, Andrea wasn't much of a drug user. She would just occasionally sell to friends and acquaintances for parties, raves, and concerts. But after getting arrested, she focused her attention on the school year ahead, moving into a beautiful new apartment building on Roebling Avenue in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, which is nestled between Beverly Hills and Brentwood.

And she lived in this apartment with five of her sorority sisters, though some reports say that she shared the space with 11 girls. Yeah, I wonder if the sources that say 11 mean in the building in general, not necessarily in on her floor of the apartment. Yeah, it definitely could have been. And I want to explain this just a little bit because UCLA does have a sorority row, which is one mile from Andrea's apartment. And since Andrea was a senior, she wasn't required to live in her sorority house.

And this street is right next to campus and there's a ton of other small apartment buildings around it. So it's a very populated area. Yeah. So it makes sense if she maybe wanted to move out with some of her sisters instead of living in the house with, you know, younger girls or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Makes sense.

Now, like Heath said, on Sunday, September 20th, 2015, Andrea and the other members of her sorority were really scrambling to get their materials ready for recruitment, which was coming up the following day. And classes were starting that coming Thursday. So a few days later, you know, there's a lot going on here. So the girls, including Andrea, were up very late that night finishing projects for the next day.

And around 3 a.m. on the early morning of Monday, September 21st, again, 2015, Andrea fell asleep on the living room couch wearing a red, snuggie blanket. At 5.50 a.m., one of her roommates, Samantha, headed out to the gym on campus and spotted Andrea still asleep on the couch.

When she returned around 6.30 a.m., so just about 40 minutes later, Andrea had presumably gotten up to go into her own room. But Samantha found it strange that her bedroom door was closed because Andrea usually left it open so that her dog, Shea Panda, could roam the house freely.

On the other side of Andrea's room was a set of French doors that led out to the ground floor balcony. And her roommates remembered later that these doors were broken and didn't lock or shut completely. So obviously this was a major safety concern, but it had not yet been fixed. And just an FYI, her other roommates at this time were asleep with, you know, like fans and other outside noise to drown out the sounds of the busy neighborhood.

And they were not roused by any commotion that night. So just remember that none of her roommates heard anything in those early morning hours. Meanwhile, upstairs, another sorority sister was having an early start to her day as well. Sarah Muir, Andrea's upstairs neighbor, had been celebrating her 21st birthday that weekend and her boyfriend was in town.

Around 5.35 a.m. that morning, so about 15 minutes before Andrea's roommate left for the gym and saw her sleeping on the couch, Sarah was returning home after dropping her boyfriend at the airport for an early flight. And she came home to go back to sleep for about an hour before she had to get up for work.

As she was unlocking the front door to her apartment to go inside, which was situated directly above Andrea's, Sarah spotted a man that she described as wearing a black baseball cap, a tank top, and dark jeans peering up at her from the bottom of the stairwell. When they locked eyes, Sarah watched him turn around and run through the courtyard toward the street.

Obviously, this kind of creeped her out, so she called her boyfriend, who was still at the airport, wondering if she should report the incident to campus police.

So Sarah looked around the building from her second floor balcony and decided against reporting this person heading back to bed for a bit before work. Yeah, I mean, she didn't know if this guy lived in the building or was someone's boyfriend or whatever. She probably didn't want to feel like she was overreacting. Exactly. Well, meanwhile, on the street below, around the same time that Sarah arrived home, a cook who worked for UCLA named Julio was collecting cans to be recycled.

Julio remembers being approached by a man wearing a tank top and sporting a tattoo on his arm. Now, he claimed that the man looked either drugged or drunk and asked Julio if he, quote, knew how to fight, claiming that he would be entering an apartment with women living inside and would need help fighting off any men if there were any in the apartment. So weird. Yeah, such a strange thing to ask a random person.

Well, puzzled by this, Julio declined and just walked away. And he said that he remembered the man heading towards Andrea's apartment building right after that. A short while later, around 6.15 a.m., so 15 minutes before Andrea's roommate returned from the gym, Sarah awoke suddenly to the sound of a woman screaming and a dog barking wildly. And Sarah said that she would have been surprised if the dog turned out to be Shay, because Shay rarely barked.

Rattled by this, especially after having seen that man about 45 minutes earlier, she called 911, fearing that someone was being attacked. Sarah looked over her balcony again and noticed that Andrea's window appeared to be open. On the 911 call, she told the operator, quote, She's still screaming, indicating that Andrea was still alive at this time.

She tried calling Andrea's cell phone, worried that something was happening to her in particular, and stepped out onto her balcony to call out her name. But she just couldn't get a hold of her. While she waited for the police to come, Sarah went out to her balcony again to keep an eye on the situation. Then, about eight minutes after placing the 911 call, at 6:23 AM,

Four officers arrived and walked the perimeter of the building, scanning their flashlights over windows and searching for the source of the commotion. The sun rose at 6.40 a.m. that morning, so the light outside was still very dim at the time that they arrived, which is why they had the flashlights. Now, Sarah spoke to one of the officers and told them how to find the front door to the unit below her, which is where Andrea lived.

One officer attempted to look into Andrea's window, but the room was too dark to see anything and basically putting his flashlight in the window didn't help glean any details of what was inside. All he could really see was a bed, but couldn't tell if anybody was in it and couldn't see any movement inside.

The windows and the front door appeared to be undisturbed, he said, so the officers closed out the request and left about seven minutes after they arrived on the scene, claiming they found, quote, no evidence of a crime.

And I know a lot of you guys are shocked by this, you know, that they didn't really even seem to look for any trouble to figure out if anything had happened. Well, two of the four officers who reported to the scene and confirmed that nothing was wrong were later fired after an internal investigation found that they did not search hard enough for the source of the screams. Clearly, they didn't even enter the freaking building. Yeah, I mean, this was just, the ball was,

Severely dropped here. Yeah, and I genuinely believe that Andrea's life depended on them entering that building and they completely let her down and are very likely the cause of her not surviving that night. It's completely sad and so, so unfortunate here. Well, about 30 minutes after they left,

Sarah was forced to call the police again when she observed smoke coming from inside Andrea's apartment. At 7.01 a.m., Sarah heard a loud bang that she claimed sounded like Andrea's door slamming open. When Sarah ran to her balcony to again look at the apartment beneath her for the source of this noise, you know, she's like, what the hell is going on tonight? She saw smoke rapidly billowing from the windows.

She then watched as a man ran from Andrea's bedroom with a red blanket draped around his shoulders like a shawl. And this would be the red snuggie blanket that Sarah had slept with that night. And get this, Sarah said that she recognized this guy as the same man that she saw lurking in her stairwell a couple hours earlier.

So, yeah, the fact that 30 minutes after the screams, there is a man running out of the apartment and a fire is starting. Like, again, if police had gotten inside, they literally could have found this guy and potentially saved her life. Yeah, and it's not like Sarah wasn't, you know, alarmed by this situation. She's saying that she heard screams coming from downstairs, like,

How is that not enough to enter the apartment? You know what I mean? Especially at that hour. And it wasn't just like, oh, I heard one scream. And oh, did you really hear that? While she was on the phone, the screaming continued. It was persistent screaming. Something is wrong. Yeah. And I'm positive that she also told police about the strange man who

that was lurking in the stairwell. Well, Sarah is like the real MVP here because she even tried to chase after this man as he ran away from the building, but he jumped into a car and sped off. Luckily now, she had the foresight to note the color of the car, which was red, and she also clocked the bumper sticker of a particular fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha. So she called 911 again, this time to report the fire.

Meanwhile, inside the apartment, the rest of Andrea's roommates are finally starting to wake up, you know, to all the smells of smoke and that very sharp and persistent ringing sound of the fire detectors.

Two of her roommates rushed to Andrea's door, screaming her name and even opened the door, despite the danger it posed to them. But by then, it was too late because when they opened that door, they noticed that Andrea's room was engulfed in flames. So the roommates and their neighbors at the apartment complex rushed outside to safety as firefighters worked to extinguish this blaze.

Sarah recalled checking in with all of them one by one until they realized with horror that the only person unaccounted for was Andrea.

As her friends and roommates tried to make sense of what had just unfolded in front of them, and, you know, held on to hope that there was any chance that Andrea was concealed somewhere inside, investigators began surveying the wreckage in the apartment and came across her remains still in bed. And sadly, her beloved dog, Shea Panda, didn't make it either.

The LAPD and the fire department were shocked to find, as they were removing Andrea's body for autopsy, that there was a copious amount of blood left behind, and that it didn't appear that Andrea had even been alive when the fire broke out. And strangely, she had been covered in trash, which was used as kindling to spread the fire.

Within two hours of the fire starting, the Los Angeles Police Department had ruled the cause of the fire to be arson. So, authorities called Andrea's parents back in Texas and urged them to come to Los Angeles as soon as possible. And while they did, investigators started looking to see if Andrea was seeing anyone or had any known enemies. But the answer to both of those questions was no.

Her friends were completely stumped, believing that it was virtually impossible that someone would want to hurt their friend who was known as a total ray of sunshine. Andrea's friend, roommate, and sorority sister Jackie shared, quote: "Andy had such a contagious spirit and was a fearless giver. Andy was a friend to every person she met. She was always inclusive and there for everyone.

More than anything, Andy wanted us to be ourselves, and most of all, to never ever give up.

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♪♪

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♪♪♪

As Andrea's community reeled from the loss and investigators were trying to make sense of the crime scene, two neighbors who live directly across the street approached them, tipping off police that their home had been burglarized early that morning, around the same time that Andrea was believed to have been killed. And this is such a big tip. It is amazing that these guys came forward because obviously,

This, I mean, this case is pretty much solved because of this tip. So what happened was these two men, Nicholas and Mahir, reported that they had a laptop, a set of car keys, and a set of Sonos brand speakers stolen from them.

The evening prior, which again was Sunday, September 20th, 2015, Nicholas had left his car keys on the desk in the living room of their apartment and Mejia had left his laptop on either the futon or the coffee table in the living room. The next day, the men noticed that both items were gone, in addition to a set of Sonos speakers that they used in the living room, which also belonged to Mejia.

Now, when Nicholas checked to make sure that his car was still parked outside, which luckily it was, and he noticed that the glove box looked like it had been rifled through. And then the men reported the burglary to the investigators at Andrea's apartment around 9 p.m. on September 21st. So later on in the evening after she was murdered.

So now acting on what police believed may be a viable theory that the burglary and Andrea's murder were connected, the LAPD actually contacted Sonos, which required a registered email address to use. And they asked the company to tip them off when the speakers were registered with an email address. So smart. This is a huge piece of the story.

The following day, the results of the autopsy were in. And as they suspected, 21-year-old Andrea had not perished in the fire. She had been stabbed 19 times. There was no smoke in her lungs, which confirmed that she was dead before the fire was even set. And then, of course, authorities believed that the fire was set to cover up the crime.

As the word of a cruel campus murder spread around Los Angeles, rumors spread as well. When publications got a hold of the drug charges that were pending against Andrea, they speculated that someone involved in the drug trade was most likely responsible for her murder. Since at this point they knew that she had been selling them previously, as she had been arrested just three months earlier in June. And this avenue was investigated by detectives because of the auspicious timing.

Andrea's hearing was set for Friday, September 25th, 2015. So just four days after she was murdered. However, they found no viable connection between the two and started looking into other theories.

And Andrea's friends and family were pretty frustrated by the treatment of her in the media in the aftermath of her murder, as if she was undeserving of justice because she had previously sold some drugs. But luckily, police persevered, and then, investigators had their first lead.

the Sonos speakers were registered to a new email address coming from an IP address in Fresno, California, which is about four and a half hours north of Los Angeles. So detectives headed there immediately, and there they found the man who had registered the speakers, a man named Joseph, who had said nervously that he didn't know where they had come from and that they belonged to his roommate, Alberto Medina.

Alberto was a 22-year-old college student at Fresno State University studying social work, and ironically, like Andrea, he even eventually wanted to pursue psychology.

But he kind of seemed to be a pretty unlikely candidate for the murder, with no criminal background and living hours away from where the murder had taken place. But when his roommate told investigators that Alberto had inexplicably come home from a holiday weekend in LA with a new set of speakers,

Well, Joseph explained that Alberto had stashed multiple items in their garage after returning home from Los Angeles, including the speakers, dishes, silverware, and towels. So like a bunch of random shit.

Alberto told Joseph that he had gotten them from a friend who was moving, so this was his explanation for having said random shit. But Alberto's second roommate, who was also named Joseph actually, told police that he remembered hearing a strange detail from Alberto about his weekend away. That a young woman had been murdered around the corner from where he was staying.

But Alberto was being almost smug about, you know, this discussion of the murder. Like he even said that the perp had likely raped the girl, which is like just a horrible thing to say smugly, you know, and that he would get away with it because she had been burned.

So yeah, definitely some unsettling comments. Well, the guy is a piece of shit as we're going to get into. Absolutely. So detectives met Alberto and brought him in for questioning. And although he spoke quickly and seemed a bit frenetic, he was kind of cheerful and tried to come across as friendly with the investigators. You know, like he just wanted to help. He had nothing to hide. Right.

Initially, when asked about the speakers, Alberto feigned ignorance, telling them that he went down to stay with his friend Eric Marquez, who was a fellow college student the weekend prior, but that he knew nothing about the robbery. Eric was also 22 years old, but he was a pre-med student at UCLA who, like Alberto said, lived just around the corner from Andrea's apartment.

When Alberto was asked about their weekend, he said casually that they spent Sunday night at a concert and attended a party afterward. Initially, that was all he was willing to share, but when asked if he had acquired a pair of Sonos speakers while on his weekend away, Alberto cocked his head, saying in a sickly contrived and puzzled tone, quote, that I know of, no.

but when pressed only slightly for details, Alberto folded, saying, "'I did it. I'm sorry.'"

He continued on to explain that he had been at a party at the house of the owners of the speakers and that the guys were, quote, being dicks. So he stole a laptop, the speakers and a bottle of alcohol to retaliate. When detectives asked, quote, a bottle of alcohol, Alberto laughed it off, saying, quote, I know, I know I was drunk.

He added that he and Eric left the apartment of Nicholas and Mahir between 5 and 5.30 in the morning and headed back to Eric's apartment to go to bed. But when they pressed him a little bit further on this, he broke down and told them that his friend Eric met a girl at the party that night and that he had gone across the street to her house with her after the party.

And this was already Alberto's third version, at least, of the night's events. Well, you shouldn't have three versions. You should have one version. Yeah, it was pretty clear that this guy was lying.

Well, when asked to describe the girl who took Eric home with her, he called her a skinny, blonde, white girl. And again, pretended to ponder when they asked what her name was until he conveniently remembered, quote, I want to call her Andy. And by the way, Andrea was a blonde, white girl. So now he's saying her name was Andy, which is what all of her friends call her.

And he's describing her appearance and saying, oh, that's the girl that my friend took home. Yeah. I mean, he knew her name from the get go. But yeah, he's like before even saying before even putting blame on Eric or anybody else, he's already deflecting blame. Well, sensing that they were closing in on him, he then changed his story yet again, breaking down and saying, quote, it's Eric. There it is. Yep.

Alberto explained that he had been waiting in his car outside the home, and that Eric had rushed to the car to meet him saying that he had "fucked up", and that he admitted to getting carried away and beating the shit out of some girl, and that Eric had then murdered her to cover it up. Tentatively, they held on to Alberto, as there seemed to be much, much more to the story.

Back in Los Angeles, investigators spoke to Eric Marquez, who had an entirely different recollection of events. Now, according to Eric, the two were asleep from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m., so they couldn't have been involved.

He said that they went home around 3 a.m. after being out drinking all night and both passed out, conveniently failing to mention the stolen goods, the breaking and entering, or the murder and arson that had taken place in their vicinity that same morning.

But when detectives pulled the security footage from Eric's apartment, they actually saw the pair leaving his apartment at 4:30 a.m. And remember, Andrea was murdered sometime between 5:30 and 6:15 a.m. Despite having been out all night and appearing intoxicated on the footage, it basically looked like they were still trying to find another party in those early morning hours.

This footage gave authorities the actual timestamps of their evening, which both men had been incorrectly remembering, or purposefully lying about. The video also offered one crucial detail: Andrea's red, snuggie blanket, which made an appearance in the video draped over, guess whose shoulders, Alberto's.

When Eric and Alberto returned to the apartment at 7.06 a.m., Alberto was holding this same red blanket that Sarah saw a man holding as he fled from Andrea's apartment. You know, the same blanket that Andrea had fallen asleep wearing just hours prior.

And this surveillance footage was pretty crucial because it's showing and proving that both of them are not telling the truth in their timeline, right? So when Eric was confronted about it and they showed him this footage, he crumbled and admitted that he had been so drunk that he couldn't remember many details of the night. So now he's saying, oh yeah, my bad. Well, I was really drunk, so I don't remember anything now. Like he's, he's not,

saying that he knows anything, but now he's just kind of saying, I don't know, shit. Still deflecting. Yeah. Well, there were two other witnesses who had a better recollection than Eric and Alberto. Two fellow UCLA students who were friends with Eric. Janae and Gabby were roommates and met Eric through school, and they had met Alberto for the first time that weekend.

The women spent the weekend drinking and partying with both of these men, but had enough of Alberto's behavior by Sunday night. They started their night playing a drinking game at Eric's apartment and eventually left them and headed out to eat at Tommy Taco, which is like a hole in the wall Mexican spot that's popular with UCLA students.

Just before 2 a.m., the four piled into an Uber and pulled up to Eric's apartment. Jeanne told the driver that they'd be making two stops, they were not going to stay over at Eric's, and that the men needed to get out so that the girls could go home.

According to Jeanne and Gabby, Alberto was, quote, really drunk and was mad at the women for ending their evening, yelling that he wanted to go back to their apartment with them. Such a creep. Yeah, we know what his intentions probably were at that point. Absolutely. Luckily, though, both men were examined for defensive wounds and physical signs of a struggle just to prove if either of them had been in some type of fight.

And Eric didn't have any kind of marks on his body, but as I'm sure you guys can guess, Alberto was found to have minor cuts and abrasions all over his body.

But he told the nurse examining him that he had been in a fight. So now he's kind of saying, oh, I didn't murder anybody. I didn't get these from an altercation with Andrea. I got in a fight. Like suggesting that it was a dude fight, you know? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you were in a fight when you were murdering an innocent woman. Yep, yep.

Well, police also learned that his red Nissan Sentra matched the description of the car that Sarah saw fleeing the scene on the morning of Andrea's murder, complete with that Lambda Chi Alpha sticker on the back.

This was the fraternity that Alberto had been a part of at Fresno State University until he was suspended for misconduct. No surprise there, and really everything is lining up at this point. Exactly. When Alberto's car was searched, investigators found smears of Andrea's blood on the door.

Inside his home, they found a black Nike brand men's tank top, which was the same one that he had been seen wearing in the security footage, and that Sarah had seen him wearing when he was lurking in the stairwell just minutes before this murder.

Detectives also recovered a bloody knife that had been pulled from Andrea's kitchen, as well as her red Snuggie and a pair of her underwear. It's just all in his home. Yeah, he just left it there like a dumbass. But they were in a black trash bag, so it's possible that he was going to get rid of them, but he just didn't do it yet. Yeah, he like threw these items into a black trash bag, put them in his car, and then essentially brought this back into his home and didn't dispose of it yet.

Well, Eric's home was also searched and they confirmed that he lived right around the corner on Strathmore Drive, just one minute away from Andrea's apartment by car. And there was also blood found inside Eric's home, proving that Alberto had gone back there after committing the murder.

At 7.03 a.m., just two minutes after Sarah Muir called the police to report the fire breaking out in Andrea's apartment, Alberto's red Nissan Sentra pulled into the apartment's parking garage. At 7.11 a.m., the two men can be seen exiting the parking garage and going toward the elevator, Alberto still wearing the blanket slung around his shoulders. And I wonder if he took this Snuggie to visually cover up any blood that was on his body or carcass

Because again, this is lining up as well. Right after she calls the police and sees Alberto driving off, his car comes up on the parking garage footage of Eric just a minute away. So it's like the timing is lining up.

And yeah, I believe that he stole the Snuggie to kind of conceal what he had done in a way. Well, yeah, we have to remember that she was stabbed 19 times. So do we really believe that none of her blood got on his clothing? Well, and like you said, there was so much blood at the scene. So yeah, it's so disturbing. But what's, you know, pretty incredible here is that that red Snuggie was one of the pieces to the puzzle that really put all of this together and took him down.

While there was no evidence that Eric was involved in Andrea's murder or had any prior knowledge of it, he definitely helped Alberto cover it up by driving the getaway car and giving him the black trash bag that Alberto used to conceal the murder weapon, his bloody clothes, and also Andrea's blanket. 22-year-old Alberto Medina was officially arrested for murder on September 27th, 2015.

Shockingly, there seemed to be absolutely no prior connection between Andrea and Alberto. I mean, the only evidence to the contrary was the testimony of one of Andrea's roommates who said that she and Andrea may have walked by Alberto while kind of strolling the neighborhood with her dog-shaped panda because she remembers this man leering at them and Alberto was staying so close by. So it's possible that, like Heath, you were saying that

you know, Janae and Gabby left and he was really upset about it. He probably wanted to try to sleep with one of them and maybe he's kind of out on the streets on the prowl and it's definitely possible that he saw Andrea and followed her home. I think it's more than possible. I think I, I truly believe that he did see them earlier or saw Andrea earlier and,

Because it seemed like it was a really targeted attack. Like, he knew which apartment she lived in, kind of like knew how to sneak into that apartment. It really feels like he was kind of, you know, prowling around, like you said, trying to find somebody

and came across Andrea. Yeah, or at least knew, because remember, Julio had said that he mentioned that there were girls in the apartment. So clearly he was watching the apartment in some way to know that there were young women in it. Absolutely. And it's very possible that he broke in

and didn't really care which one of them he was going to attack, but happened to find Andrea because, as we mentioned, Julio said that he was breaking into a house where there were multiple girls, right? Yeah, and he wanted help fighting off any men that would be inside, probably to get to the women, which is so terrifying and disgusting. Yeah, so if it hadn't have been Andrea, it possibly could have been one of those other girls that was living at that apartment. Well, investigators believe that it is...

very likely that he did enter Andrea's apartment with the intent of raping her and then brought a knife from the kitchen to threaten her with. But when she woke up and fought back, he killed her.

He then hid in her room when the first round of police officers reported to her residence and then dumped the contents of her trash can on her body, setting it ablaze to cover up what he had done. So yeah, he was lingering in her apartment. I mean, he was probably sitting in her room like still as the officers were outside shining their flashlights and sorry, looking down.

for any sign of anything wrong. And he's just sitting in there minutes later, lights a fire. That's a very, very eerie thought. You know, it's, it's very eerie to think about the fact that the man who murdered this young woman was like just hiding in her room and

And again, it's so unfortunate that police just didn't do anything the first time they were there. Yeah, it's so disappointing because even though she was stabbed 19 times, it's very likely that even if they had, you know, they got there eight minutes after she started screaming at least, right? So it's very possible that she would have been dead by the time they got there. But this whole thing, then at least we would know. We would know that they tried everything.

And then they would have found him in her room. Well, clearly the department felt like there was an injustice there because those two officers were eventually fired. Yeah, so this was clearly a major letdown. Well, regarding the rape charges, again, police do believe that she was sexually assaulted. But because her remains were so badly burned, they were not able to file formal rape charges.

Alberto originally pleaded not guilty to all charges, no shock there, but the evidence against him was overwhelming.

Originally, prosecutors wanted Eric Marquez to be brought up on murder charges as well. However, Deputy District Attorney Victor Avila decided, "...there was insufficient evidence to show that Marquez knew exactly what happened inside Andrea DelVesco's apartment. We believe that it was best to settle the case with Marquez for something that was more appropriate to his conduct."

So Eric Marquez instead pled guilty to aiding and abetting the burglary and accessory after the fact. So he received a sentence of two years and eight months in state prison.

33 people brought forward victim impact statements on Andrea's behalf. And the judge also allowed her mother, Leslie, to play a slideshow for the court with pictures from all of Andrea's milestones. In her speech, Leslie informed Alberto that Andrea had a rare gift of making everyone feel appreciated and loved, and that she was always the one that her siblings would turn to for comfort and guidance.

She concluded, quote, On May 28th of 2018, Alberto was found guilty of one count of first-degree murder, as well as one count of arson of an inhabited structure, one count of animal cruelty for the death of Shea Panda, and two counts of first-degree burglary.

Four months later, on September 21st, 2018, three years to the day after Andrea's murder, Alberto was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Windham described Alberto to the court as too dangerous to ever be released, telling them, quote, According to Leslie, though these convictions could not bring her daughter back, they did bring her some comfort.

She maintains that her daughter's legacy is still teaching her new things, though Andrea may not be around to see them. Leslie said, quote, Andrea was here to show us a deeper understanding of what love is. She taught me that love is boundless and infinite, and for all of us to treasure the moments that we do have with each other. ♪

Thank you.

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Appreciate you guys being here. And if you want to see photos from this case and all the other cases that we've covered thus far, go check out our socials. We're on Instagram at Going West Podcast. And we also have a discussion group on Facebook. And a regular Facebook group. And a regular Facebook group. We have two. Nobody knows why. Yeah.

Sweet. Nobody knows why, but if you want to discuss this case, you can find us on either one of them. Yes, please. And again, a big thank you to Aloy. I think that's how you say it. I looked it up and that's what I found. Thank you so much for recommending this case to us. We wouldn't have otherwise known about it. It was such a devastating story to dive into. So thank you so much. And if you have any recommendations, please again, send them to our email. That is the only way that we'll see them. GoingWestPodcast at gmail.com. And we try to get back to everybody that we can.

And thank God that monster, Alberto, is in prison forever. Yeah, I love that quote. That quote. That quote. That quote.

Where he said that he should never walk free. And I completely agree. Like somebody like him clearly was just doing no good. He for so long, you know? Yeah. He was, he was robbing people. He was murdering young females. He was assaulting women. Yeah. This guy is a terrible, terrible person. So yeah. Well, thanks again, everybody for tuning in and for everybody out there in the world. Don't be a stranger.

so