The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit identified the suspect in a 33-year-old murder who was living under a different identity in Ohio.
The suspect, however, has died. Gerardo Aguilar, also known as Gerardo Mulato, was murdered in 2007 following a gunfight with the FBI in Ohio when he was being investigated for narcotics trafficking. Aguilar was sought in the 1991 gang murder of a 14-year-old.
“It’s never too late to identify a killer,” said District Attorney Jeff Rosen. “People could forget. However, the victims’ relatives and my office do not.
Since 2018, the District Attorney’s Office has solved 20 killings and 15 sexual assault cases. The Cold Case Unit, founded by District Attorney Rosen in 2011, also seeks to find and capture known individuals charged with decades-old killings who are still at large.
On September 28, 1991, Gerardo Aguilar, 15, shot and murdered 14-year-old Raymond Ojeda during a gang-related incident in San Jose’s Foxdale Loop neighborhood. A juvenile arrest warrant was issued for Aguilar, but local officials were unable to find him. The suspect vanished.
Earlier this year, the DA’s Cold Case Unit discovered a guy residing in Ohio named Gerardo Mulato as possibly being Gerardo Aguilar. Investigator John Cary conducted a background check and discovered that the suspect’s sister’s last name was Mulato, so he searched for Gerardo Mulato.
He located a guy who resembled the suspect in Forest Park, Ohio, near Cincinnati. DNA tests proved that they were the same individual. Aguilar had been residing in Ohio as Mulato for some years before being arrested in 2004 for assault with a baseball bat in Springfield.
Mulato witnessed the FBI place a monitoring device on his automobile in 2007. Mulato believed they were vehicle thieves, so he grabbed a revolver and was shot by an agent.