Neighbor Arrested in ’92 Killings of 2 Women

Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide investigators have arrested a man in the decade-old double slaying of a Cerritos woman and her housekeeper, detectives announced Friday.

Derrick Charles Snowden, 35, was arrested by undercover detectives Thursday in the city of Orange. He has been charged by the district attorney’s office with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. He is being held without bail.

Snowden is accused of killing his longtime neighbor, 49-year-old Mayda Porras, and her live-in housekeeper, Ana Silvia Junco, 27, said Lt. Ray Peavy. The two were shot to death in Porras’ Shadow Park home sometime between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on April 30, 1992.

Porras’ car, a 1987 Nissan Maxima, was stolen and driven to a Long Beach gas station, where a female driver purchased gas using a credit card belonging to Porras’ daughter, investigators said at the time of the slayings. The car was found two blocks from the Porras home.

Although detectives at first believed that Snowden carried out the slayings, they did not have enough evidence, Peavy said. But investigators recently took a fresh look at the case.

Peavey would not say specifically what solved the case, but said the arrest was not driven by advances in technology, such as DNA or ballistics. Detectives can benefit from the passage of time, during which relationships can change among suspects and their ex-spouses, girlfriends or acquaintances.

“It was good, old-fashioned police work, questioning people and listening to what people were saying, and going from there,” Peavy said. “It was like putting a puzzle together.”