PLACENTIA : $10,000 Reward OKd to Find O’Neil’s Killer

The City Council has approved a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the death of 53-year-old resident Mary Ann O’Neil, who was found in the trunk of her car last month.

That brings the total reward money offered to $25,000, when combined with the $15,000 offered by friends and family members of the slain woman.

O’Neil, a photo studio production manager, was fatally struck in the head and her body was found in the trunk of her 1992 Infiniti on Nov. 17 outside a restaurant a few blocks from her home, according to Placentia police.

Investigators hope the two rewards will encourage people to come forward who may have information about O’Neil or Ray Pereda, a 44-year-old cabinetmaker who moved out of her house about a month before she was killed. Pereda had rented a room in O’Neil’s home for three years.

Police say that Pereda fled when officers came to question him at his new home in Anaheim.

O’Neil’s body was found in a restaurant parking lot across the street from a drugstore where 20-year-old Placentia resident Cathy Torrez was last seen in February 1994. Her body was found a week later in the trunk of her car, but Police Chief Manuel E. Ortega said the two crimes are not connected. There are rewards totaling $36,000 for information leading to arrest and conviction of Torrez’s killer.

The council approved the reward on Tuesday.