syscom3
Pacific Historian
I'm glad they got this pervert! 43 years is better late than never!!!!
News: Cold case detectives make arrest in 1964 slaying | santa, case, murder, police, cold - OCRegister.com
Cold case detectives make arrest in 1964 slaying
Fingerprint evidence from hotel killing of Christine Elizabeth Wariner leads to Phelan man, Santa Ana police say.
By LARRY WELBORN
The Orange County Register
SANTA ANA Cold-case detectives from Santa Ana police kept telling Christina Lonzo over the years that someday they would solve the 1964 murder of her mother.
After 43 years, she thought it would never happen.
But on Thursday, she got a call at her Alabama home: A convicted sex offender from California had been arrested and charged with murdering her mother, Christine Elizabeth Vono Wariner, in a Santa Ana motel Feb. 16, 1964.
"This is absolutely amazing," Lonzo said in phone interview Friday. "This makes me very happy that this happened for her. She never got any satisfaction in life. She always felt she was misused, and she always felt everything went against her.
"This is one thing that could be done for her, in her favor," Lonzo said.
Charles Edward Faith, Jr., 67, was taken into custody Thursday without incident at his mobile home in Phelan – near San Bernardino – by Santa Ana police and the U.S. Marshall's Office.
Faith is being held in custody in lieu of $1 million bail pending an arraignment Monday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.
It is the oldest cold-murder investigation – at 43 years – in Orange County history to result in an arrest.
Santa Ana police spokesman Jose Gonzalez said that modern forensic technology allowed detectives to link four bloody fingerprints found at the 1964 crime scene to Faith, who had a sexual assault conviction in Newport Beach in 1959.
Over the years, detectives submitted the fingerprints to various law enforcement databases without getting a hit. Nearly 200 potential suspects were eliminated because their fingerprints did not match those found at the crime scene.
Finally, after advances in forensic sciences, a suspect was matched to the bloody fingerprints: Charles Faith.
He was officially charged late Thursday after he was interviewed by cold case detectives Louie Martinez and Ferrell Buckles.
"We believe that Christine Elizabeth Wariner was brutally raped against her will, beaten and strangled to death to eliminate her from identifying her assailant," Martinez wrote in an affidavit in support of the warrant for Faith.
"There is reason to believe … Faith beat and strangled her to death," Martinez wrote in the affidavit. "He then hurriedly left the scene, leaving his bloody latent fingerprints behind, solidifying his being present and responsible for the rape/murder."
Wariner was the live-in manager at the California Motel and boarding house at 601 N. Main Street in Santa Ana when she was murdered. News accounts reported that her partially dressed body was discovered by a tenant who noticed her door was ajar when he came to her apartment to pay his rent.
She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled.
Police said at the time that she might have known her assailant since there was no sign of struggle. Headlines reported that by the end of February 1964, Santa Ana detectives questioned more than 200 people in connection to the slaying. Faith was not among them.
Gonzalez said Friday that detectives do not know if Wariner and Faith knew each other back in 1964. But he said detectives have confirmed that Faith was familiar with the California Motel, which has long since been torn down.
The news of Faith's arrest reached Lonzo, now 64, at her home in Florence, Ala., on Thursday.
"I am kind of spinning," she said Friday. "I haven't got in touch with my feelings yet. I am very anxious to see what's going to happen next."
Lonzo said her mother was a beautiful but troubled woman who always had difficulty coping with life, dating back to her childhood when her father, Lonzo's grandfather, committed a murder in Iowa and was executed in prison.
Her mother was then raised in orphanages and often made poor choices as she grew up. She said her own father was crippled by infantile paralysis but that her mother "was mentally crippled."
"My mother was a very sad person," Lonzo said.
The daughter said that when she was 5, her mother became so distraught over the prospects of having her children removed by welfare workers that she tried to commit suicide, taking the children with her.
Lonzo said that after that, she and her brother Michael were raised by relatives or in foster homes. She said she once saw her mother years later, when officials considered a reunion. But she said she hardly recognized her mom.
"I always had a lot of empathy for her because she always had an extremely rough life," Lonzo said. "That poor woman. Her life was always so negative that it was almost inevitable that her life would end up badly."
News: Cold case detectives make arrest in 1964 slaying | santa, case, murder, police, cold - OCRegister.com
Cold case detectives make arrest in 1964 slaying
Fingerprint evidence from hotel killing of Christine Elizabeth Wariner leads to Phelan man, Santa Ana police say.
By LARRY WELBORN
The Orange County Register
SANTA ANA Cold-case detectives from Santa Ana police kept telling Christina Lonzo over the years that someday they would solve the 1964 murder of her mother.
After 43 years, she thought it would never happen.
But on Thursday, she got a call at her Alabama home: A convicted sex offender from California had been arrested and charged with murdering her mother, Christine Elizabeth Vono Wariner, in a Santa Ana motel Feb. 16, 1964.
"This is absolutely amazing," Lonzo said in phone interview Friday. "This makes me very happy that this happened for her. She never got any satisfaction in life. She always felt she was misused, and she always felt everything went against her.
"This is one thing that could be done for her, in her favor," Lonzo said.
Charles Edward Faith, Jr., 67, was taken into custody Thursday without incident at his mobile home in Phelan – near San Bernardino – by Santa Ana police and the U.S. Marshall's Office.
Faith is being held in custody in lieu of $1 million bail pending an arraignment Monday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.
It is the oldest cold-murder investigation – at 43 years – in Orange County history to result in an arrest.
Santa Ana police spokesman Jose Gonzalez said that modern forensic technology allowed detectives to link four bloody fingerprints found at the 1964 crime scene to Faith, who had a sexual assault conviction in Newport Beach in 1959.
Over the years, detectives submitted the fingerprints to various law enforcement databases without getting a hit. Nearly 200 potential suspects were eliminated because their fingerprints did not match those found at the crime scene.
Finally, after advances in forensic sciences, a suspect was matched to the bloody fingerprints: Charles Faith.
He was officially charged late Thursday after he was interviewed by cold case detectives Louie Martinez and Ferrell Buckles.
"We believe that Christine Elizabeth Wariner was brutally raped against her will, beaten and strangled to death to eliminate her from identifying her assailant," Martinez wrote in an affidavit in support of the warrant for Faith.
"There is reason to believe … Faith beat and strangled her to death," Martinez wrote in the affidavit. "He then hurriedly left the scene, leaving his bloody latent fingerprints behind, solidifying his being present and responsible for the rape/murder."
Wariner was the live-in manager at the California Motel and boarding house at 601 N. Main Street in Santa Ana when she was murdered. News accounts reported that her partially dressed body was discovered by a tenant who noticed her door was ajar when he came to her apartment to pay his rent.
She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled.
Police said at the time that she might have known her assailant since there was no sign of struggle. Headlines reported that by the end of February 1964, Santa Ana detectives questioned more than 200 people in connection to the slaying. Faith was not among them.
Gonzalez said Friday that detectives do not know if Wariner and Faith knew each other back in 1964. But he said detectives have confirmed that Faith was familiar with the California Motel, which has long since been torn down.
The news of Faith's arrest reached Lonzo, now 64, at her home in Florence, Ala., on Thursday.
"I am kind of spinning," she said Friday. "I haven't got in touch with my feelings yet. I am very anxious to see what's going to happen next."
Lonzo said her mother was a beautiful but troubled woman who always had difficulty coping with life, dating back to her childhood when her father, Lonzo's grandfather, committed a murder in Iowa and was executed in prison.
Her mother was then raised in orphanages and often made poor choices as she grew up. She said her own father was crippled by infantile paralysis but that her mother "was mentally crippled."
"My mother was a very sad person," Lonzo said.
The daughter said that when she was 5, her mother became so distraught over the prospects of having her children removed by welfare workers that she tried to commit suicide, taking the children with her.
Lonzo said that after that, she and her brother Michael were raised by relatives or in foster homes. She said she once saw her mother years later, when officials considered a reunion. But she said she hardly recognized her mom.
"I always had a lot of empathy for her because she always had an extremely rough life," Lonzo said. "That poor woman. Her life was always so negative that it was almost inevitable that her life would end up badly."
