Wednesday morning Muffie Ellis of Columbus got the phone call she”s been waiting on for 17 years. On the line was a San Diego district attorney with news police had just arrested the man they think murdered her son that many years ago.
Earlier that day in Kent, Wash., officers arrested Leopoldo Castro Chavez II, 34, and charged him with the 1993 murder of Cliff Ellis, 20, and Keith Combs, 23, both of them sailors on the aircraft carrier Constellation in San Diego.
The murder occurred in an undeveloped stretch of commercial property near Interstate 805 in San Diego. The site was popular with off-road motorists by day and at night with young people who gathered around bonfires to drink and socialize.
According to a police report, Ellis and Combs were among several groups of males and females as well as groups of Hispanic males partying and drinking in that area. Combs and Ellis were there with a small group of friends. The group disbanded and the two sailors later returned to the site. Their bodies were found the next morning by a doctor and his son, who were dirt biking.
Ten days after the murder Chavez, aka “Weasel,” was found in Tijuana, Mexico driving Ellis” white Toyota. Detectives then didn”t have enough evidence to tie him to the slayings and he was never charged.
Cliff Ellis had enlisted in the Navy after graduating from Heritage Academy in 1991. His mother had hoped he would join the Naval Reserves with its shorter two-year commitment.
“If I”m going to do it, I”m going to do it all the way,” he told his mother.
Ellis was an engineer in charge of the elevators that lifted aircraft to the flight deck, his mother said.
After her son”s murder, Ellis, a diminutive, soft-spoken woman, became something of an activist — she wrote letters, she networked with other parents of murdered children and along the way taught the Navy a thing or two about determination.
Despite initial opposition from the Navy she had the site of her son”s murder declared off limits. A midshipman had been shot in the leg the week before the murder.
The Navy told her she wouldn”t be able to recover her son”s truck.
“I”m going to get my son”s truck back,” she replied. And with the help of Rep. Sonny Montgomery, she did, though it came home without tires and battery. Charlie Ellis, Cliff”s adoptive father and Muffie”s husband, drove the truck for eight years.
In time the case was relegated to the cold case file.
And, after 10 years of advocacy and prayer Ellis slowed down.
“I never completely gave up, but I did say, ”Lord, I”m going to have to give it to you now.””
Enter Kim Tedesco of the elite Naval Crime Investigative Services (NCIS). In addition to being a popular TV series, NCIS is the primary law enforcement and counterintelligence arm of the U.S. Navy.
Tedesco happened upon Ellis” file and was moved by the letters written by the young man”s mother.
“I wrote many letters,” Muffie said.
Tedesco called Ellis in February to say she was investigating the case.
“You are the answer to a prayer,” Ellis told her. “Do the best you can.”
Two and a half weeks ago Tedesco called to say an arrest was imminent. The suspect had a Facebook account and, more significantly, there was DNA evidence linking Chavez with the crime scene.
According to news reports, Chavez was arrested at 7 a.m. as he was leaving for work. Ellis says the arrested man is a father of five.
Extradition to California could take up to 120 days, Ellis said. The trial could be six months to a year from now. She plans to be there for the trial.
“I”d like him to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Ellis said.
What about the death penalty?
Ellis paused to think a moment and then she replied, choosing her words carefully, thinking about each one: “When you read your son”s autopsy and all its graphic detail, how your son was shot in the head and shot in the heart … I think I could (support that).”
As it would for any parent, the murder of Cliff Ellis forever changed the lives of Charlie and Muffie Ellis. Yet, says Ellis, a conviction would restore a measure of balance in their lives.
“When things like this happen, it makes you think the world”s going mad. This will never bring closure, but it will bring balance,” Ellis said. “For me, the world has been off-kilter. There is meaning.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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