Two brothers pleaded guilty and were immediately given life terms on Tuesday, April 1 for strangling, dumping and setting fire to a 14-year-old girl in Irvine in 2009.
Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman, 39, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, and Gabino Valdivia-Guzman, 56, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, according to court records.
As part of the plea deal, sentencing enhancements for special circumstances kidnapping were dismissed.
Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman was sentenced to 25 years to life and Gabino Valdivia-Guzman was sentenced to 15 years to life
The two were convicted of killing 14-year-old Marcia Shirree Thomas, who had been reported missing out of Reno, Nevada, at the time she was killed on Sept. 5, 2009.
For years and through their initial trials, the victim was not identified. But in July of last year, authorities were able to identify her through DNA records.
Gabino Valdivia-Guzman’s last trial ended with a mistrial when jurors deadlocked 11-1 for guilt. His brother was sentenced in April 2023 to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but the conviction was overturned on appeal on a claim a prospective Latino juror was improperly excluded by a prosecutor.
Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman was previously tried in 2016, but that ended in a mistrial when jurors deadlocked 11-1 in favor of guilty for first-degree murder.
Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman killed the victim while his brother helped dispose of the body, according to prosecutors.
The body was found in the parking lot of a business at 1851 Kettering in Irvine, where an employee heading into work spotted it, according to former Senior Deputy District Attorney Robert Goodkin, who is now an Orange County Superior Court judge.
The victim did not have any personal effects on her, but she appeared to be in her 20s and was about 6 feet tall and weighed 150 pounds.
According to a trial brief filed in Gabino Valdivia-Guzman’s case, Senior Deputy District Attorney Harris Siddiq said investigators suspected the victim was in her early 20s.
The case went unsolved for 14 months until genetic material collected from the victim’s left hand matched the DNA of Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman, who had provided a genetic sample to resolve a misdemeanor domestic violence case in which he choked his girlfriend and threw her 9-year-old son against a wall when he tried to intervene, Goodkin wrote in court papers.
Irvine police placed the brothers under surveillance and arrested them following a traffic stop in November 2010, Goodkin said.
Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman initially told police he knew nothing about a murder and then said he was too drunk at the time of the incident to remember, Goodkin said.
When confronted with evidence, he “admitted certain things,” Goodkin said in his opening statement of the trial.
The two brothers picked up the victim in a high-prostitution area of Santa Ana at First Street and Harbor Boulevard the night of Sept. 4, 2009, Goodkin said.
“The evidence will show you (the defendant) was hiding in the back of the van and she doesn’t see him,” Goodkin said during one of the trials.
When the victim notices Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman in the back of the van, while the defendant’s brother was driving, she, “starts screaming, ‘Let me out of this van,”‘ Goodkin said. “She doesn’t want to be in a van with two guys. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
The defendant pulled her into the back of the van as she shouted for help, Goodkin said. As she fought back, the defendant “hits her in the face and hits her hard,” Goodkin said, adding, “he hits her till she’s quiet.”
The defendant admitted that he “squeezed a little bit” around her neck, but evidence shows the victim was strangled, Goodkin said.
“She didn’t die from blunt force trauma to the face,” the prosecutor said.
The brothers drove around for about 90 minutes before settling on a secluded place in an industrial area of Irvine to dump the body, Goodkin said. The two brothers, who were in the auto detailing business, had gasoline in the van that Gabino Valdivia-Guzman allegedly used to help ignite the body, the prosecutor said.
“There was no soot in her lungs,” indicating that the victim was already dead when she was set afire, Goodkin said.
Zenaido Valdivia-Guzman also wrote a letter of apology to the family, which is a common tactic by police to solicit a confession.
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