Following an investigator’s hunch, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit announced today that it had tracked down the suspect in a 33-year-old murder who was living under another name in Ohio – and discovered that the man died 17 years ago.
The DA’s Office said that Gerardo Aguilar, also known as Gerardo Mulato, was killed in 2007 during a shootout in Ohio with the FBI, which had been investigating him for drug trafficking. Aguilar was wanted for the 1991 gang murder of a 14-year-old in East San Jose.
“It’s never too late to identify a killer,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement released today. “People may forget, but victims’ families and my office do not.”
On Sept. 28, 1991, Aguilar, who was 15 years old at the time, shot and killed 14-year-old Raymond Ojeda during a gang-related confrontation in the Foxdale Loop area of San Jose, according to prosecutors.
A juvenile arrest warrant was issued for Aguilar, but local authorities were not able to locate him. The suspect disappeared.
Earlier this year, the DA’s Cold Case Unit identified a man living in Ohio under the name Gerardo Mulato as possibly being Gerardo Aguilar.
Investigator John Cary did a background search and found the suspect’s sister’s last name was Mulato, so he did a search for Gerardo Mulato, according to today’s press release.
“Cary found a person who looked a lot like the suspect in Forest Park, Ohio, near Cincinnati,” the DA’s Office reported. DNA analysis confirmed they were the same person. Aguilar had been living in Ohio under the name Mulato for several years, having been arrested in 2004 for an assault with a baseball bat in Springfield.
In 2007, Mulato saw the FBI installing a tracking device on his car. Apparently believing they were car thieves, Mulato pulled a gun and an agent shot him.
The DA’s Office said it has solved 20 homicides and 15 sexual assault cold cases since 2018. The Cold Case Unit, established by District Attorney Rosen in 2011, also works to locate and apprehend known suspects charged with decades-old homicides who are still at large.
