An accused gunman shot a man and woman to death in a Santa Ana mobile home and then returned less than two hours later to set the residence ablaze, a prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday, Feb. 3 at the start of a double-murder trial.
Jason Philip Blanchard on June 10, 2022 showed up “uninvited and unwelcomed” to the mobile home where Steven Lucero, 30, and Jillian Jones, 33, were living, killed the two of them “for no reason” and later “returned to the scene to destroy the evidence, to destroy the bodies and to set the scene on fire,” Deputy District Attorney Casey Cunningham told an Orange County Superior Court jury during his opening statements in a Santa Ana courtroom.
Blanchard’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Sara Ross, told jurors that the wrong man was on trial. The defense attorney accused Santa Ana detectives of carrying out a “shoddy” investigation. And she alleged that the actual shooter was a man who admitted to entering the mobile home with Blanchard and who is now testifying against Blanchard after being granted immunity by the prosecution.
According to the prosecution, Blanchard and the other man — John Acosta — arrived at the Bit O’Home Trailer Park on W. McFadden Avenue shortly after 8:15 p.m. and immediately entered the residence. Lucero, who was wearing only a towel, asked Blanchard something to the effect of “Who are you?”, the prosecutor told jurors, and Blanchard pulled out a gun and responded by saying “I’m about to show you.”
Blanchard forced Lucero to backpedal into his bedroom, where Jones was sitting on a bed, the prosecutor said. As Acosta watched, the prosecutor alleged, Blanchard struck Lucero on the head with the weapon, causing it to fire and the gunshot to hit Jones. Moments later, the prosecutor added, Blanchard killed Lucero.
“He decided to execute Steven Lucero and shot him directly in the head,” Cunningham said.
Another resident of the mobile home — who was in another room — told police that she heard Jones say something like “Where did you get rid of it?” followed by a gunshot, then Lucero asking “Did you just kill her?” and two more gunshots.
Blanchard and Acosta left the mobile home. The prosecutor said Acosta convinced Blanchard to let him out of his car. About an hour an a half later, security footage captured Blanchard returning to the mobile home with a bag the prosecutor said contained a gas can, moments before flames erupted from the mobile home.
Later that night, Blanchard met a woman he knew at the Crazy 8 motel in Orange. When he asked her for a cigarette, the woman noticed Blanchard had gauze or cotton on his neck, she later told police. Blanchard told her he had been burned in a fire, the woman told police, then later added that he had killed two people that night in Santa Ana and had set a house on fire.
The defense argued that Acosta, not Blanchard, was the actual killer, as well as the “star witness” for the prosecution. The killing may have been related to a stolen truck and trailer, according to the opening statements by the defense.
Ross, the public defender, told the jury that days before his killing, Lucero had stolen a truck with a trailer attached owned by a homeless man named Brian Salemi. Lucero had then sold the stolen truck and trailer to a man with the street moniker of “Boo Boo.”
Hours before the killings at the Santa Ana mobile home, Blanchard and Acosta had met up with “Boo Boo” in Westminster and Salemi in Fountain Valley, the defense attorney said. Blanchard and Acosta had also smoked methamphetamine before going to the mobile home, she added.
Ross sharply criticized the Santa Ana police investigation into the killings.
Despite doing a forensic search of the bedroom where Lucero and Jones were killed after fire crews brought the blaze under control, it took four days for police to discover Jones’ body in the small room, the defense attorney said.
Detectives didn’t look into Acosta’s cell phone records, didn’t realize he had a second burner phone, and didn’t look at his social media messages, Ross said. A defense expert is expected to testify that the forensics don’t match up to Acosta’s description of what happened in the bedroom, the defense attorney added. And Ross alleged that surveillance footage taken of Acosta immediately after he left the mobile home showed him holding what she alleged was a gun against his body.
“John Acosta is a desperate rat who will do anything to gnaw his way out of a jail cell,” Ross told jurors, adding that Acosta and other witnesses expected to testify for the prosecution are “a bunch of crooks and liars.”
Acosta, during his own testimony on Tuesday morning, said he thought Blanchard wanted to stop by the mobile home in order to meet up with an ex-girlfriend of Blanchard’s or a girl he had “messed around with.” He denied seeing Blanchard with a gun prior to entering the mobile home.
Acosta’s testimony differed at times from the account the prosecution told jurors. Acosta said he and Blanchard encountered Jones in the bedroom before seeing Lucero. And Acosta described a seemingly nervous Jones at one point telling him she had just learned she was pregnant.
Blanchard and Lucero were arguing loudly, Acosta said, with Blanchard asking “Where is it?” and “What did you do with it?” and Lucero responding “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Asked why he later agreed to cooperate with authorities, Acosta explained, “I just didn’t like what went down with that girl, it didn’t sit right.”
Along with a pair of murder charges, Blanchard is also charged with arson and with being a felon in possession of a gun. If convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.