A Redondo Beach woman enlisted the help of her ex-husband to kidnap and kill her boyfriend and was the driving force behind the slaying even though she didn’t physically kill the victim herself, a prosecutor told a Torrance Superior Court jury during closing arguments of the former couple’s trial on Thursday, June 13.
Prosecutor Matthew Pfeffer said Maricela Mercado, 45, never feared her ex-husband, 44-year-old Roman Cerratos, even after he stabbed and shot 32-year-old Jeffrey Appel as the victim sat next to her in the passenger seat of his own car in the early morning hours of April 16, 2019.
Pfeffer said her actions indicated the former couple was working together because she wanted Appel dead.
“Maricela Mercado is the reason this whole thing started,” Pfeffer told the jury. “She’s the instigator. She did nothing to stop it.”
Mercado and Cerratos each face one count of murder and kidnapping, with Cerratos facing enhancements for personal use of a knife, a handgun and murder during the commission of a kidnapping.
Jurors began deliberating Friday afternoon after a trial that lasted more than a week.
Defense attorneys argued there were holes in the prosecution’s theory, chief among them a reason why the defendants wanted Appel dead and the minimal amount of Appel’s blood located in the car after a medical examiner’s investigator testified that he bled out after one of the stab wounds nicked an artery.
Instead, defense attorneys suggested Appel may have been the aggressor and that Mercado and Cerratos may have been trying to help him when they drove him to the parking lot of a children’s hospital in Torrance after he suffered his injuries.
They argued prosecutors didn’t prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“They showed you a bunch of photographs with no connection,” said Nancy Sperber, Cerratos’ attorney, of the prosecution’s case. “They did not connect all the dots. They did not give you all the pieces to the puzzle.”
Mercado and Appel met in Las Vegas, but moved to Redondo Beach to pursue job opportunities, Pfeffer said, with Appel landing an accounting job at a Manhattan Beach firm.
At some point, Appel moved out of the apartment and was staying at the Howard Johnson hotel on Torrance Boulevard, just east of Hawthorne Boulevard, Pfeffer said. A receipt, shown to the jury, showed Appel stayed there starting April 12 and planned to check out the day of the murder.
His father, Steven, testified his son planned to move back to Las Vegas.
“He never did, because these two defendants murdered him,” Pfeffer said.
While prosecutors said they don’t know why Mercado and ex-husband Cerratos killed Appel, or why the three ended up in Appel’s car that morning, he said Mercado likely knew where Appel was staying and likely arranged for them to meet.
Defense attorneys said prosecutors showed no evidence of a kidnapping.
Prosecutors disagree that Appel was stabbed before he was taken to the Children’s hospital lot, as the defense lawyer alleged. Pfeffer said Cerratos stabbed Appel as he sat in the passenger seat of his own car in the parking lot of the hospital, and later shot him as Mercado drove them into Carson, dumping the car with Appel’s body behind a business in the 400 block of Carson Plaza Drive.
Witnesses heard someone screaming for help outside the children’s hospital and saw a man standing outside the passenger door appearing to punch someone inside, Pfeffer said. A knife, which had both Appel’s and Cerratos’ blood on it, and a shoe belonging to Appel were found by Torrance police later that night.
In Carson, investigators found blood on the side of Appel’s white car and a blood trail belonging to Cerratos leading away from the car.
The next morning, along with Mercado’s teenage daughter, Cerratos and Mercado fled to Mexico, prompting Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials to put out an Amber Alert for the girl.
Cerratos was found in Mexico about two months after the killing and arrested. Mercado and her daughter were found in Chihuahua three months after the slaying, Pfeffer said.
A toxicology report showed methamphetamine in Appel’s system at the time he died, the defense attorneys said.
They argued that prosecutors presented no reason why Mercado and Cerratos would want Appel dead.
Instead, the defense attorneys, without directly claiming self-defense, said Appel was likely the aggressor.
Sperber said Cerratos did not know Appel prior to that day and had no reason to kill him.
Steven Kwon, Mercado’s public defender, said investigators found gunshot residue only on Appel’s hands, indicating he may have fired the gun. He also pointed to a wound on Appel’s right index finger as a possible self-inflicted wound from attempting to stab someone. Kwon also said the wound found on Cerratos’ hand was likely an attempt to disarm Appel of the knife.
“If a gun had been fired in the car, gunshot residue would be on other parts of his body, but it’s just on his hands,” Kwon said, adding that the idea anyone would be firing inside a moving car was “absurd.”
Kwon said there was no evidence to prove Mercado played a part nor helped Cerratos in the killing.
But Pfeffer said there was no evidence to show Mercado and Cerratos tried to help Appel. Rather, their attempts to ditch the clothes and flee to Mexico showed a consciousness of guilt, he said. They also never called for help in more than 24 hours between ditching the car and heading to Mexico, the prosecutor added.
“Nothing they did shows they wanted him to survive,” Pfeffer said. “Everything they did was to conceal their connection to the crime.”
Deliberations continue on Monday.
Related links
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Amber Alert issued for teen who may be with Carson homicide suspects
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