Even veteran homicide detectives were unprepared for the macabre scene that greeted them in Room 66 of the Continental Hotel.
The fleabag dive was a fixture on Los Angeles’ notorious Skid Row, an urban calamity for junkies, drunkards, the broken and luckless.
But the horrors inside the dingy room were mind-boggling even by local standards.
Smorgasborg of gore
On Nov. 28, 2010, the hotel maid was making her rounds and noticed that something was not quite right in Room 66. Inside was a lonely backpack and a bed stripped of sheets. Bizarre.
She retrieved the manager, and upon closer inspection, the pair discovered a sickening smorgasbord of gore, including a pair of severed arms, still bound by duct tape. And inside the heavy backpack were reams of human flesh.
Under the flophouse bed was a man’s torso, a gory canvas of scratches and small punctures. The victim – a Black male – had died in agony and had suffered hours of torture beforehand.
Investigators also found a syringe, bags with methamphetamine residue and a box of Hot Tamales candy. Two pairs of men’s boxers and a pair of women’s underwear, all soaked in blood, completed the tableau.
Monsters in LA
Sitting on the bed “like a tombstone” was a Los Angeles Lakers hat.
Cops believed the murder was planned, ritualistic, and above all, despicably evil. They had a monster – or monsters – on their hands.
The victim was Herbert Tracy White, 48, and he was a well-known good Samaritan. Athletically built and trained in the martial arts, he stood 6-foot-5.
Herbert would not have gone down easily.
“He befriended someone and let his guard down,” his brother David White said. “He would accept you first and run your resume later.”
His wife, Annie Coty-White, told detectives her husband’s cellphone rang about midnight. Someone needed help. Herbert knew what it was like to be in a dark place. He was a former cocaine addict turned Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, and he was always determined to do the right thing.
He climbed out of bed, put on his prized Lakers hat and disappeared into the night.
Sex on the menu?
The dingy room at the Continental had been rented to a sleazebag couple, a man and a woman. The man had told a hotel security guard that the woman was his girlfriend. The name he gave to the desk was bogus.
Herbert had met the couple who weren’t from Los Angeles and were down on their luck at a Chase Bank in Hollywood the day before. As usual, he listened to their tale of woe. They were hooked on drugs and didn’t have a penny. He gave them his phone number.
“Call me if you need anything … any time,” he told the pair. “You want to get sober, call me.”
He drove the desperate duo to the Continental Hotel and even paid for their room.
For more than a week, detectives kept hitting dead ends in their hunt for the maniacs who had slaughtered Herbert White. Then two names came up: Edward Garcia Jr., 36, and his wife, Melissa Hope Garcia, 25 – two methheads from York, Pennsylvania.
The twisted twosome had apparently slipped out the fire escape after killing White, cops believed. A week later, the US Marshals cornered them in an abandoned building, out of their minds on drugs.
‘A bloodbath’
Police said the couple came to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania and lived in their car until it was towed. They then settled into a homeless camp in the Hollywood Hills, and after it was bulldozed, they moved to Skid Row.
Edward Garcia went on trial for first-degree murder in May 2015.
District Attorney John McKinney told the jury that following a brief struggle in the hotel room, Herbert was “incapacitated and his wrists were duct-taped.”
“They dragged him onto the bed and began making non-fatal cuts on his face while he was still alive … there were punctures and scratches on his chest and two fatal stab wounds to his neck,” McKinney said. “It was part of a long-held fantasy of theirs to dismember a body.”
Wanted sex?
“It was a bloodbath. They took this man apart. And they thought about it long before it happened.”
White’s body had been almost completely drained of blood, with Edward using a 3.5-inch knife to “filet” him.
But the defence said Herbert brought drugs to the room and wanted to have sex with Melissa Garcia. So, matters were … much more complicated.
Public Defender Haydeh Takasugi told the court: “He said, ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you guys’ and then he looked at Melissa and said, ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you.’”
The same type of sexual lubricant that White had at his home was found in the room, she added.
Garcia had admitted to the crime but could not remember what he had done.
He told detectives in a video shown to the jury: “I wish that it wasn’t me in that room – but it was. I did that.”
The jury returned with a guilty verdict .
Judge Larry P. Fidler looked down upon Garcia, shaking his head. In sentencing Garcia to life in prison without parole, Fidler said he had seen much in his years on the bench – but nothing like this.
“I thought I had seen it all,” Fidler said. “I was wrong … It goes beyond ‘you wouldn’t believe it if you’d seen it’ and I saw it. I’m still not sure I believe it.”
Melissa Garcia was also convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun
