Tried as an Adult at 16: California’s Laws Have Changed but Angelo Vasquez’s Sentence Has Not

“Hi guys. It’s me, Angelo Jacob Vasquez.”

The 33-year-old was speaking in a recorded call from a Los Angeles County jail to his online supporters. Tried as an adult when he was 16, Vasquez is serving 25 years to life for second degree murder.

Vasquez had recently been moved from Kern Valley State Prison on a court order to return his case to juvenile court where a judge would rule — he hoped —  that he could be resentenced in juvenile court with the possibility of being released on time served. But when he arrived, shackled, at the courtroom in Pomona last November, he did not recognize the judge or the deputy district attorney now on his case.

In the 17 years since Vasquez’s conviction, California’s laws have changed. Courts have opened the door for people who were sentenced to life imprisonment as minors to be retried. Going forward, it will be harder for prosecutors to try juveniles as adults. And no longer can a person who was not the actual killer be prosecuted for murder.

Angelo Vasquez in 2019.

To Vasquez’s surprise, the D.A. in the Pomona courtroom instead filed a motion to send him to adult criminal court to be resentenced. “I haven’t been able to stop crying,” Vasquez told his supporters. “As many of you know, the actual perpetrator, Christopher Murray, has been released for over two years now.”

Vasquez’s voice is muffled and laced with sadness. His partner, Vedder Gonzalez, who listens to Vasquez’s voice remotely, worries Vasquez has lost the will to live. His attorneys are now preparing for his next court date on May 17.

Caitlin Dukes, Vasquez’s attorney, is fighting the effort to return her client to an adult court for resentencing. “But if the D.A. decides to move forward with transferring Angelo to an adult court, it will be a long process,” Dukes said.

“If anyone cares, if anyone’s there, I need your help,” Vasquez said. “I feel desperate and vulnerable right now.”

*   *   *

In 2006, Vasquez, a lanky teenager with long black hair and sleepy dark eyes, was a pot-smoking kid fresh out of a juvenile behavior center.

14-year-old Vasquez at a juvenile detention center.

He had gotten into trouble more than once for drugs, fist fighting and breaking into cars — acts of rebellion from a teen lashing out against what he described as a turbulent home life. But nothing in Vasquez’s short but growing rap sheet would have landed him a life sentence. That all changed one April afternoon.

The morning started out like so many others. Suspended from school, Vasquez slept in, then got on the phone with his best friend, Salvador Villanueva, 18, whose intimidating stature did not match his teddy bear-like demeanor.

“Can I come over, man?” 

Vasquez, half awake, mumbled his agreement. Thirty minutes later, he heard Villanueva’s footsteps bounding up the driveway. Peering out the blinds of his bedroom window, Vasquez saw that Villanueva wasn’t alone. With him was Christopher Murray, 17, a bookish, homeschooled teen who had recently begun dealing marijuana to kids in the neighborhood, according to testimony from Vasquez and Villanueva’s murder trial in 2007.

The three teens played Xbox video games in Vasquez’s bedroom and smoked pot. As the morning wore on, Murray unzipped his backpack and showed Vasquez and Villanueva two new handguns he had recently gotten his hands on. Murray had been packing a loaded firearm for months by then, as he testified in court in 2022.

When they decided to walk to a liquor store for snacks, Murray badgered Vasquez and Villanueva into carrying the guns he had brought with him.

“The way I looked at it,” Murray told the court in 2022, “we would all look tough having guns on us.”

On their way to the store, they bumped into Christopher Trevizo, a 15-year-old who lived in the area. Vasquez and others said they remember Murray being bullied by Trevizo and the boys he was hanging with that day, the 16-year-old twin brothers Demetrius and Damon Flores.

“They broke into his house, they robbed him with a shotgun and stole his weed,” Vasquez told Capital & Main from a prison payphone. “They beat him up. They tormented this kid.”

Because of the bullying, Murray had asked Villanueva to get him a  gun.

“He needed protection,” Villanueva told Capital & Main. “I gave him the gun to protect himself.”

It didn’t take long for the .357 Magnum to surface on that sunny spring day in Hacienda Heights, a suburban community in L.A. County.

Murray and Trevizo argued, then cursed, then shoved each other. According to Vasquez’s and Villanueva’s interviews with police the next day, as the fight escalated, they each pointed their unloaded guns at the Flores brothers.  

Suddenly, Murray pulled out his gun and shot both Trevizo and Demetrius Flores point blank, before trying to gun down Damon Flores. 

“Chris shoots the guy next to me in the throat and I thought maybe I had been hit,” Vasquez told Capital & Main. “It went off so close to me that it fucked with my equilibrium and my ears started ringing. I start running away from Chris because he’s killing everybody and I’m thinking maybe he wants to kill me too.”

All three teens, Murray, Villanueva and Vasquez, were tried as adults and convicted of murder in 2007.

Murray and his lawyers were ultimately able to take advantage of California’s reformed laws, and he was retried as a juvenile and released in 2021.

Vasquez and Villanueva appealed their cases the same year and Murray testified on their behalf.

“They [Vasquez and Villanueva] didn’t know that I was going to commit these crimes. I didn’t know that I was going to commit these crimes until I did,” Murray testified in court. “I don’t believe that it’s right or just for either party to have two men sitting in prison, serving the rest of their lives in prison [for] something I did that day.”

But Vasquez’s and Villanueva’s appeals were denied, and they remain behind bars.

*   *   *

Vasquez and Gonzalez are not legally married, but they consider themselves spiritually so. Since 2018, they have lived out mundane moments together — Gonzalez cooking dinner in the kitchen; Vasquez strumming his acoustic guitar cross-legged on his thin twin mattress; Gonzalez on an iPhone and Vasquez on his prison-issued tablet. They revisit and reconfirm a few agreed upon plans: to one day cozy up in front of the fireplace in Vasquez’s family home in Big Bear; to buy a piece of land and build a house they can fill with their art — Gonzalez’s photography and Vasquez’s paintings; to be truly alone, without anyone standing guard nearby or listening in on their private conversations.

A drawing of Vedder Gonzalez by Vasquez.

On a 15-inch flatscreen television bolted to the wall of his cell, Vasquez watches a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rerun while Gonzalez eyes the same episode on a television in a tiny, crowded bedroom in their father’s home in Sacramento. Their lifeline is cut off promptly at 9 p.m., when Vasquez’s allotted time on the tablet expires for the day. But they continue texting long into the night.

Gonzalez (who prefers they/them pronouns) has saved hundreds of items that reflect the evolution of their love story — letters from Vasquez penned in ebony ink with fine-lined sketches traced along the margins, as well as black, white and gray oil paintings and charcoal drawings depicting faces in distress, a colorless countryside, the moon. There’s a portrait of Gonzalez, their tattooed forefinger and thumb forming a V around their chin, an expression of resigned longing apparent even in the black oil paint of their eyes.

Also in the collection is a notice of visitor’s approval from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation dated Aug. 2, 2018. Scrawled across the printed page is Vasquez’s handwritten message: “I love you!” This memento marks an early victory in the couple’s five-year relationship when they met face-to-face for the first time.

Vasquez and Gonzalez haven’t seen one another in person since February 2020, just before the pandemic lockdowns began.

Vasquez and Gonzalez stand before a Valentine’s Day-themed background during a visit at the state prison in Corcoran in February, 2020.

The first years of Vasquez’s prison sentence passed in a blur of shock and bitterness. It seemed impossible that he was still behind bars even though he’d never fired his weapon. As it sunk in that he might spend much of his adult life locked up, Vasquez began to harden and withdraw. His mother, Adrienne Flores, stayed in touch, but they both knew that she, too, was helpless.

After 12 years of solitude, Vasquez yearned for companionship and decided to create a profile on a website that launched in 2000 with the goal of reducing recidivism by promoting positive correspondence.

Vasquez said his mom advised against posting a profile. “No one wants to write a prisoner,” she told him, “let alone start a relationship with one.”

Around the same time, an impulse brought Gonzalez, 36, who runs an online metaphysics shop, to the Write a Prisoner website. Gonzalez identifies as transgender and nonbinary and felt compelled to help transgender inmates in practical ways –— sending books, art supplies, even modest deposits to commissary accounts.

Vasquez at 28.

“I came across an incredibly goofy photo of this kid holding a football,” Gonzalez recalls of the photo of then-28-year-old Vasquez in an oversized white T-shirt and baggy gray shorts that hung mid-calf, a half-smile angled awkwardly above his dark manicured goatee. “He was beautiful. I noticed his interests in spiritualism, poetry, art and music, and the initial feeling I had was that I was supposed to be paying attention to this profile.”

After corresponding with a handful of potential pen pals, Vasquez received a letter from Gonzalez in 2018. Each word seemed electric.

“I could see from the letter that they were just as lonely as I was,” Vasquez recalled. “And even though they wrote that they just wanted to be friends, I laughed because I already knew that this was my other half, my twin flame.”

After Vasquez received a second letter from Gonzalez, the communications flowed frequently and openly. In addition to their mailed correspondence, they began using the prison’s messaging app to communicate.

Each letter, email and video chat deepened their connection. “We fell in love,” Vasquez said.

“I live in the first cell on the bottom tier and my view is gates and birds and a lot of stones though this time of year I see the traffic of insects, sometimes a couple rabbits come by [my cell window] and my favorite is when an owl comes by they stay the longest,” he wrote Gonzalez in 2018. “I received your image this morning. You’re truly breathtaking …. It is hard to keep composure knowing you chose me? How? I’m a pale freak in a cell? You said I’m beautiful. You’re the first to ever say that to me.”

A few months into their courtship, Gonzalez sent Vasquez messages explaining the essence of their identity and the ways in which it had alienated them from people in their life. But Vasquez was accepting. He asked a lot of questions and wanted to learn all he could not only about Gonzalez, but about the queer community.

“It was the first time I let someone know my full truth and in return he let me know I never had to be anyone but myself,” Gonzalez said. “I never had to be ashamed.” 

Vasquez with his mother, Adrienne Flores, in 2020.

In 2019, Gonzalez was diagnosed with cervical cancer. It was difficult to find a doctor who was comfortable with their transitioning body, but eventually they did, and a hysterectomy was scheduled.

With Gonzalez’s health uncertain, the couple decided to get married, even though they’d only met in person twice. Checking off each requirement on the prison’s “Marriage Packet Overview and Instructions,” Gonzalez and Vasquez prepared for their big day, scheduled in late 2019, in Yard D of the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, where Vasquez was then imprisoned.

Vasquez’s mom was with them, ready to bear witness as Vasquez and Gonzalez stood in line, eager to recite marriage vows. But when Vasquez asked the prison-sanctioned officiant to use Gonzalez’s preferred pronouns, he said the man became agitated, telling him, “Men aren’t supposed to marry men. You’re not supposed to marry a transexual.” Citing his religious views, the officiant refused to marry them.

They tried to stay positive, assuming they could reapply and be married at the prison by someone more tolerant. As they made plans to try again the pandemic all but shut down ordinary life, including marriage ceremonies in prison.

So they decided to do marriage their own way.

The couple prepared vows and picked a date in February of 2020 to have a virtual ceremony, 225 miles apart. They crafted a ritual calling on their ancestors to bear witness.

“It was a bonding ceremony just between Vedder and me,” Vasquez said. The vows Vasquez made to Gonzalez were succinct, but sincere:

You’ve slayed me since the first letter. I vow to love you forever.

To belong to you and only you.

I will always make it known

That I am branded yours.

I will wage wars for you.

I will protect you and heal you.

I will always see you as my equal.

And I will respect you in your truth.

Every Moon.

Every life.

Gonzalez’s vows to Vasquez were longer and told a story of bewitchment and transformation from the very first letters between them.

I vow to be by your side through every experience no matter how spooky or mundane.

I want it all and I promise to never take what we have for granted.

I vow to be your creative partner in love and magick and to always give you my honesty and devotion.

May we truly be allowed to thrive in this next chapter of our lives.

Three years later, Vasquez and Gonzalez’s hopes were raised again when state Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a response on Vasquez’s behalf, agreeing that he was wrongfully denied a hearing to determine whether his case should be moved to juvenile court and, possibly, freed. Vasquez was moved to L.A. County Jail in October in anticipation of that moment.

And still he waits.

“I don’t have another year in me,” Vasquez said in his recorded message. “ I can’t do this no more.”

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