A former Las Vegas man found stabbed and shot to death in the front passenger seat of his car in a Carson parking lot in 2019 had been dating a woman accused of playing a part in his slaying along with her ex-husband, a prosecutor told a Torrance Superior Court jury in opening statements of trial Wednesday, June 5.
The case gained attention after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department put out an Amber Alert asking for help from the public in locating Benitez, while also identifying her mother and Cerratos as suspects in the slaying.All three were found in Mexico months after Appel’s death and Benitez was reunited with her father, ABC Los Angeles reported in July 2019.
The prosecutor told jurors that Cerratos and Mercado were at one point married, but separated. Mercado then went to Las Vegas, where she met Appel and the two started dating before moving to Redondo Beach so Appel could find job opportunities. Appel ended up landing a job at an accounting firm in Manhattan Beach, according to prosecutors and testimony presented Wednesday afternoon.
During his opening statement, Pfeffer told the jury two people heard screaming coming from the parking lot of the Torrance Civic Plaza Medical Center along Torrance Boulevard east of Madrona Avenue, around 4 a.m. and at least one of them saw a man in a hoodie and dark pants punching another person in the front passenger seat of a white car.
They walked to the apartment of a friend of Mercado’s unannounced, where they showered and changed, Pfeffer said, adding that the friend noticed Cerratos’s hand was bleeding. The previous clothing was put in a plastic bag and placed in a dumpster at the complex, but it was picked up the following day when Cerratos, Mercado and Benitez showed up in Mercado’s BMW sedan, according to surveillance video played by prosecutors.