Pubdate: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 Source: Orange County Register (CA) Copyright: 1999 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Author: Stuart Pfeifer-OCR PROSECUTOR: INFORMANT ROLE LED TO SLAYING Police Had Said Chad Macdonald Wasn't Working For Them Anymore At The Time Of His Death. Yorba Linda teen-ager Chad MacDonald was strangled and beaten to death because he was a police informant, a prosecutor told jurors Monday as trial opened for the three suspects in the youth's killing. "The defendants believe he's an informant and they don't want him to tell, so they kill him," Deputy District Attorney Jeff Ramseyer told a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury in Norwalk. Ramseyer's comments marked the first time a law enforcement official has said Chad MacDonald's role as a police informant led to the March 1998 killing. Cindy MacDonald sued Brea police last year, contending that the department pressured her son, then 17, to work as a drug informant and placed him in danger that led to his death. Police acknowledge that the youth made a single undercover drug purchase for them, but insist he was long out of the program by the time he went to the Norwalk house where he was slain. The case sparked debate about police use of juveniles as informers and led to a state law that now requires judges to approve the use of teenagers as police operatives. The trial of Jose A. Ibarra, 21, Michael L. Martinez, 22, and Florence Norega, 30, opened 19 months after MacDonald's body was found in a south Los Angeles alley. The three are charged with MacDonald's murder, the rape and attempted murder of his girlfriend, kidnapping and robbery. They could face the death penalty. Defense lawyers told the jury Monday that their clients merely intended to beat up MacDonald to scare him because they had heard he was a police informant. Ibarra's lawyer, Forrest Latiner, told the jury that a key issue will be MacDonald's drug dealing and how it led him to that Norwalk house. "That area, you don't go there," Latiner said. "Chad went there. He took his teenage girlfriend there. ... Then a problem occurred. They heard he was a snitch. What do you do about it? You teach someone a lesson." Latiner and the two other lawyers argued that MacDonald died during that "lesson," not during a robbery or kidnapping, the special circumstances Ramseyer needs to prove to secure a possible death sentence. The only witness called to testify Monday was MacDonald's girlfriend, who for the first time publicly described the day her boyfriend was killed and how she was raped, choked with a rope, shot in the face and abandoned in the Angeles National Forest. The girlfriend said she was forced to listen from an adjacent room while Ibarra and Noriega strangled MacDonald. Martinez put his hands - and a gun - over ears so she would not have to hear MacDonald dying, she said. "I said, 'Will you please cover my ears! That's my boyfriend in there,'" said the young woman, now 18. The Orange County Register is not identifying her because she is a sex-crime victim. She began sobbing as she described her boyfriend's death, prompting Superior Court Judge Dewey L. Falcone to take a recess. Cindy MacDonald wept in the front row of the courtroom while listening to details about the slaying. The young woman said she went to the Norwalk house to visit MacDonald after he ran away from home, and agreed to stay with him. MacDonald, she said, frequented the house to buy drugs in the months before his death. She told the jury that she and MacDonald smoked methamphetamine with Ibarra, Noriega and Martinez on March 2, 1998. Noriega, she said, argued with MacDonald about the quality of the methamphetamine, then forced both youths to remove their clothing so she could search them for hidden recording wires. During her testimony, the girlfriend referred to Martinez as "Speedy" and Noriega as "Flo," the street names she said she knew them by. She said the three stole her necklace and ankle bracelet and MacDonald's watch, emptied their pockets and backpacks, and demanded that they come up with $225 or die. Martinez and Noriega drove MacDonald to a bank, but he was unable to withdraw money with his bank card, the girlfriend testified. While they were gone, she said, Ibarra forced her to perform oral sex. When MacDonald returned without the money, she said, the three began beating them both in the head with a rifle. Noriega gagged MacDonald with a sock shortly before the girlfriend said she heard choking sounds. - --- MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto