Man Found Guilty of Killing Ex-Girlfriend
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A Los Angeles Superior Court jury convicted a Perris man Monday of killing his former girlfriend in her home, where cigarette butts found after the slaying had the killer’s DNA.
Arturo Johannas Gutierrez is expected to be sentenced next month to 25 years to life in state prison for suffocating Christie Lee Fleming on May 13, 1989.
Gutierrez was arrested last year and has since been in jail in lieu of $1-million bail.
The cigarette butts were tested five years after the slaying, but the results were not conclusive until new technology recently became available.
Fleming, a 25-year-old secretary, was found dead in her Whittier condominium after she failed to show up for a breakfast with her mother and sister, authorities said.
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