A Los Angeles prosecutor in the murder trial of a homeless couple told jurors in his opening statement Wednesday that the 2010 'ritualistic' killing of Herbert Tracy White was part of the suspects’ 'long-held fantasy of dismembering' a body.
White’s body was found cut up into five parts and stuffed into a bloody backpack in a seedy hotel in Skid Row November 29, 2010.
Additional human remains, including the torso of the 49-year-old victim, were discovered wrapped in sheets beneath the bed.
Long-awaited trial: Edward Garcia, 41 (left), and wife Melissa, 30 (right), are on trial for the 2010 murder and dismemberment of 49-year-old Herbert White
Butchered: White’s body was found cut up into five parts and stuffed into a bloody backpack in a seedy hotel in Skid Row November 29, 2010
Grisly crime scene: A maid who went to clean room 66 at the Continental Hotel found a bag containing White's still bound arms and his torso underneath the bed
A housekeeper made the grisly find when she went to clean Room 66 at the Continental Hotel.
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SharePolice almost at once zeroed in on Edward and Melissa Garcia, a couple from Pennsylvania whom White had met in Hollywood a few days prior, as the prime suspects.
During opening statements Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney John McKinney recounted in court how the Garcias called White in the middle of the night asking him for help, reported Los Angeles Times.
Do-gooder White, a recovering drug addict who became an Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, met the Garcias a few days before his death and offered to help them get sober
White, a recovering drug addict who became an Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor after kicking his cocaine habit, told his wife that some people struggling with addiction whom he had met a few days earlier needed his assistance and took off. He never made it back home.
White drove the Garcias to the Continental Hotel and agreed to pay for their room.
‘What proceeded that night was truly dark and sadistic,’ the prosecutor told jurors.
McKinney described for the jury how the Garcias tortured an incapacitated White on the hotel bed by cutting his face and chest before driving a knife into his jugular vein.
Edward Garcia then grabbed a knife and went to work butchering the man's lifeless body with great precision, McKinney told the court. At one point, the accused killer sliced a piece of White's leg muscle off the bone 'like a filet.'
The following morning, a housekeeper entered the room and found a backpack. She summoned a manger who opened the bag and found inside a pair of severed arms still trussed with duct tape.
Under the bed, the hotel staff came upon Herbert White's torso dotted with puncture wounds and scrapes.
Describing White's murder as a 'ritualistic killing,' the prosecutor suggested that the Garcias were motivated by blood lust, and that the victim's body was almost entirely drained of blood.
Edward Garcias' lawyer Haydeh Takasugi painted a different picture for the jury, however, claiming that her client was high on methamphetamine, which Herbert White had allegedly brought to the hotel, at the time of the killing.
She also suggested that White was planning to have sex either with both spouses, or just with Melissa Garcia, and to that end he allegedly brought lubricant with him.
Mr White's mother Elizabeth Peterson, center, pictured her in 2010 with his brothers David White, left, and Anthony White, right, was on hand for the beginning of the trial this week
White's wife, Annie Coty-White (center) last saw her husband when he got a call from the Garcias on November 28, 2010, asking for help. This image shows the woman not long after the killing
The public defender representing the 41-year-old suspect said that her client admitted to the killing but expressed remorse, and that all of the dismemberment took place post-mortem or right before Herbert White succumbed to his wounds.
Edward and Melissa Garcia then fled the blood-soaked third-floor room through a fire escape and went on the run.
The duo were finally apprehend December 10, 2010, just a few miles from the scene of the gruesome crime.
The vagrants were discovered living in an abandoned office building in Hollywood.
Investigators in LA later learned that a year and a half before Herbert White’s slaying, Melissa and Edward Garcia, then still living in Pennsylvania, lured two men to their apartment and attacked them with a knife, but the victims were able to escape.
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