A Tragic End to a Young, Passionate Life

The best flamenco guitarists must understand the moves and motives of the dancers who perform to their accompaniment. Miguel Fernandez, a Pomona schoolteacher, played the instrument only as an aficionado. But he had become an expert on the style of his most cherished dancer, Maria Isabel, his only daughter.

She had that bravado and air of arrogance that this ancient Gypsy dance demands. She was joyous and independent too, ideal qualities for a performer who must express herself spontaneously and surrender to the uninhibited emotion of her art.

Earlier this year, the free spirit of this rising young star was snuffed out. Isabel Fernandez, as she was known by friends, was allegedly stabbed by a jealous boyfriend who then abandoned his Ford Mustang at the Mexican border and disappeared, police say. The charming and well-dressed suspect, still on the loose, had tragically tried to possess a stunning 17-year-old whose soul already belonged to flamenco.

Juan Talavera of Whittier, a veteran choreographer who teaches Spanish dance throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, said the death on Feb. 5 of such a bright talent stunned the region’s close flamenco community.

“She had this certain light that only very few people have on the stage,” Talavera said. He plans to join other flamenco performers in a benefit Aug. 29 at Pasadena City College, where she was a student. Proceeds will go to publicize the hunt for her killer.

Isabel had strong legs but delicate and graceful arms, as her art required, said her father, fluttering his hands over his head to impersonate her elegant motions. They were like wings, no match for the brutal force of an enraged killer.

The teenager was cremated in her favorite polka-dotted flamenco dress. She also wore uncustomary gloves to spare the sight of her wounded limbs. Her fine hands had been sliced and shredded in her futile fight with the knife blade. The gorgeous body she had sculpted with so much discipline was grotesquely gouged by more than 40 disfiguring thrusts from an out-of-control butcher.

“How could she handle a bull in a ring with no cape and no sword?” asked Fernandez, 61, who shared a Pasadena apartment with his daughter.

Police are still seeking the suspect, Johnny Andres Ortiz, 27, who lived with his parents in Chino Hills before he fled. Pasadena officials have offered a $25,000 reward for the capture of the slim Colombian with the crooked, dimpled smile.

A Dissatisfied Father

The victim’s father, who recently filed a wrongful death suit against the suspect, complains that police have not done enough to track him down. Fernandez also believes his daughter might still be alive if police had acted more decisively in response to the first 911 call they received on the morning of her death.

The call came in at 11:18 a.m. on that Friday. “A woman was heard screaming in the background,” according to the police report. The officers who responded saw no signs of forced entry. The curtains were drawn and they heard no stirrings inside. After 20 minutes, they left.

Two hours later came another 911 call. It was from Fernando Ortiz, the suspect’s father. He said his son had called him from a pay phone and admitted doing something terrible to Isabel. The father of the fugitive wanted police to go to the victim’s home on Harkness Avenue and check the welfare of the girlfriend.

The police report does not explain why the man waited an hour after his son’s call to sound the alarm. Nobody returned messages left at the Ortiz residence.

When officers finally entered, they didn’t break down the door. They waited for a manager to bring a key. Inside, an officer noticed blood smeared on the telephone receiver. The telephone was hung up and sitting on the night stand.

In the police report, officers call her Victim Fernandez, capitalized like a proper name.

They awkwardly described the position of Isabel’s nude body. She was lying on the floor by her bed, her head resting on a large piece of plywood, about 4 by 8 feet.

The police account failed to convey the tragedy symbolized by the terrible tableau.

Isabel lay dead on the platform she used to practice her dance steps. Her blood had spilled into a pool on the wood. About a foot from her head, police noted two bloodied prints from a tennis shoe.

A kitchen knife also lay on the plywood platform, blood caked on its wood handle and six-inch blade. A second kitchen knife was found on the bed. The grisly death scene was reflected in the mirror where she would watch herself dance.

The case forced Pasadena police to review their procedures. No rules had been violated, officials said, but officers subsequently were instructed to “err on the side of forcing entry whenever there is a possibility of human life being in danger,” according to the new policy.

It’s unlikely Isabel could have been saved even if police had barged in on the first call, officials said, because her wounds were so severe. But her father is not convinced. He also believes police might have caught the killer in the act.

“Clearly, we understand the distress of the father,” said Cmdr. Mary Schander. “I assure you we’re doing everything we can to find the murderer.”

Fernandez, with a weary sigh, says he’s heard it all before.

In another sign of what he considers police incompetence, he said officers carelessly left behind the alleged killer’s watch at the crime scene, which he later turned over to detectives. And on the eve of the funeral, friends made a more grisly find--pieces of flesh on one of the stuffed teddy bears Isabel loved so much.

Details Come to Light

It wasn’t until after the killing that Fernandez learned details of his daughter’s troubling relationship. Like a normal teenager, she preferred to share her personal life with her friends, who sometimes called her “Angel.”

Friends say Isabel’s boyfriend was so jealous that he followed her, showed up uninvited to her dance practices, and gave her a pager to keep tabs on her at all times. He would sometimes page her half a dozen times while she watched a movie with friends, who’d say, “Are you serious? It’s him again?”

At other times, Ortiz would call Isabel on her cellular phone, accusing her of lying about who she was with and demanding to talk to her female companions to check her story. Judy Sanchez, 24, a close friend, said Isabel would even get pleading calls from the boyfriend’s mother after a breakup. She’d beg Isabel to take her son back because he was lovesick and starving himself to death, said Sanchez. The tactic, combined with gifts of chocolates, balloons and teddy bears, softened the young woman’s heart.

On the Sunday before the killing, the couple broke up without a big scene, said a friend. Isabel returned his gifts, including the small portable heater he had given her to keep her room warmer and the pendant that fused their names, Johnny and Maria, around her neck.

But then came the ominous, desperate messages on her answering machine. Six or seven in a row, pleading with her to pick up: “Maria, mi amor, contestame el telefono. Donde estas? Contesta, amor, por favor!”

Unheeded Warnings

Fernandez, who had just returned from Bolivia, said he tried to warn his daughter about the man the night before she died. But Isabel, who had cooked dinner for her father that evening, was bubbly as usual and brushed aside his concerns.

“And that was the last talk I had with her,” said Fernandez, who went to work the next morning and never saw his girl again.

In a small, spartan home in Pomona where he moved after the slaying, Fernandez keeps a small box with an embossed angel on the front. It contains the urn with Isabel’s ashes.

“I don’t want to leave her here,” he said. “I want to take her to Bolivia where she was born. I think she belongs there.”