Salinas man who killed teen stepson in 1984 denied parole, again
A man who killed his teen stepson and buried him under the family’s Salinas home nearly 40 years ago was denied parole once more this week.
Jackson Villarta, 69, received a three-year denial at his suitability hearing on Tuesday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It's at least his third time before the board.
In 1984, Villarta fatally shot his 16-year-old stepson Christopher Denoyer and hid the body under the family’s home on Navajo Drive in North Salinas. The teen’s body wasn’t found until 14 years after his death when the new residents of the home saw a pair of shoes sticking out of the dirt in the home’s crawl space.
For Monterey County Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon, the case stands out. Brannon prosecuted the murder case against Villarta twice after the first case resulted in a hung jury.
“The idea that you'd be able to keep it a secret, the idea that you'd be able to dispose of the body there on the premises … to come home every day and continue to deny it and expect that nobody else would figure it out - I mean, it's really rather extraordinary, there's nothing like that,” Brannon said.
The discovery
In the Oxygen docu-series “Buried in the Backyard,” Denoyer’s father said his son was a cheerful and kind person.
In recent years, the case has garnered the national attention of the ever growing true-crime genre and has been the subject of the Oxygen series, the podcast, “Once Upon a Crime,” several YouTube channels and other podcasts.
Villarta, the last person to see Denoyer alive in 1984, said that he had simply walked away from the home.
The family later received a telegram that was signed as from Denoyer and said that he was sorry he had to “leave too soon” and “for being very rude.” However, family - including Denoyer’s mother - didn’t believe Denoyer sent the message, which was billed to Villarta’s home phone.
Denoyer was classified as a missing person, and his photo appeared on milk cartons. For years, the teen’s mother searched extensively for her son, traveling to truck stops all over the country and sharing flyers with his picture.
For weeks after Denoyer’s disappearance, the family also experienced an awful smell in the home as they ate meals above Denoyer’s gravesite, which was accessible via a trapdoor in the pantry, Brannon said. Family members believed that the smell came from a pet snake that had escaped and died. Years later, they moved out of the home.
In 1998, a new resident of the house was in the crawl space doing renovations and saw the tips of tennis shoes sticking up from the dirt. The man thought it was some sort of joke and told his wife about it.
Salinas detectives were trying to close out old files and had sent a letter to the property asking for any information related to Denoyer’s disappearance. The new homeowner realized the shoes could be related to the missing teen.
A family member then went into the crawl space with a shovel to dig out the shoes, but once near the shoes, the smell of death was overwhelming. The homeowners called police, who later cut out the entire kitchen floor above the area and with the help of a forensic anthropologist, exhumed a largely intact human skeleton and bullets.
The remains were confirmed to be Denoyer, and investigators later found evidence, including the murder weapon, that tied Villarta to the murder. Villarta had tried to sell the gun very cheaply shortly after Christmas 1984, but he couldn’t make the sale, Brannon said.
During the weeklong trial in 2000, police testified that Villarta had a turbulent relationship with his stepson, and a forensic pathologist said that Denoyer appeared to have been shot in the back of the head. Officers also testified that after Denoyer disappeared, Villarta told his wife’s co-worker that she was “wasting her time” searching for the boy.
“I can’t think of (a case) where a person acted so selfishly, in the sense that they’re married to a person who ostensibly they love, and not only does he take her son but he was able to keep it secret and denied it all the way to the trial,” Brannon said. “…He was very callous because not only did he do that and bury the kid but then he watched his wife spend years searching for her son that she would never find.”
Villarta was found guilty of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison. Villarta is an inmate at Solano State Prison.
Villarta showed no remorse, Brannon said, and denied the murder for years until eventually admitting guilt at a parole hearing. Some of the criteria considered by a parole board is whether guilt is admitted, if the person provides insight as to why they committed the crime, and whether they present high risk to reoffend. At a previous hearing, although he admitted offense, he didn't provide much insight as to why he killed Denoyer, said Brannon.
Brannon said this is likely one of the “original cold cases” in Monterey County; “I’m not sure that we had ever prosecuted a murder that old before.”
According to the California Board of Hearings, approximately a third of people will be granted release at a parole hearing at some point.
Contact Chelcey Adami at chelcey.adami@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Salinas man who killed teen stepson in 1984 denied parole, again
