3 Not Charged After Arrests in Killing of Catering Truck Workers : Crime: Saying they don’t have enough evidence, police release two men. A third is held in another case.

Three men arrested this week in the execution-style slayings of five North Hollywood catering truck workers were not charged with murder because police could not gather enough evidence, authorities said Thursday.

Two of the men--including a former police informant who drew investigators’ suspicion because he knew intimate details of the crime--were set free while the third was being held on unrelated weapon and drug charges.

Citing uncooperative witnesses and other difficulties, Los Angeles police said they could not gather enough evidence to persuade prosecutors to charge Edward Taffolla, 24, of North Hollywood and Tony Rivera, 32, of North Hills with the Dec. 7 slayings of five people who were abducted in their catering truck from Lankershim Boulevard.

Taffolla, the former informant, was released Thursday while Rivera was being held in lieu of $15,000 after pleading not guilty in San Fernando Municipal Court to charges of possession of narcotics and a firearm by a convicted felon. The third man, Lawrence Aguinaga, 36, of Santa Maria, was released Wednesday night by police after witnesses did not identify him as a suspect.

“I am disappointed that we were not able to file a sufficiently legal case to bring these murderers to justice,” said Cmdr. John White, head of detective services. “We believe these are the right individuals.

“We’re still continuing our investigation. We have other leads. We are not through with this case at all.”

The three men were arrested Tuesday morning after a six-month investigation into the slaying of Ismael Cervantes, 43, of Sylmar; his son, Ismael Cervantes Jr., 13, of North Hollywood; brothers Heriberto and Jesus Sandoval, 16 and 19, and Francisco Gasca, 31, all of North Hollywood.

The victims’ bound bodies were found dumped in La Tuna Canyon near Sunland three days after the catering truck owned by the elder Cervantes was found ransacked and abandoned in North Hollywood. All five had been stabbed and four had also been shot.

The catering truck had last been seen in operation on the night of Saturday, Dec. 7, parked on Lankershim Boulevard near Vanowen Street--a spot where it had been an almost nightly mainstay for several years.

Police said Thursday that they believed the killings were possibly drug-related but would say little else.

“Based on our information right now, it is probably drug related,” White said. “We are not sure about that but there seems to be a drug connection and some of the evidence we found involves drugs.”

In an ironic twist, White revealed that Taffolla appeared in February as an unidentified informant on a Channel 4 news show where he said the killings were drug-related and ordered by the “Mexican Mafia” or “eMe”--a prison gang--because the elder Cervantes had violated orders and was selling drugs on his own.

However, White refused to confirm the details of the report.

The three suspects were identified by police after Taffolla gave information in January to the California Youth Authority, where he was a parole agency informant, which was passed on to police, White said. Detectives used his information to identify Rivera and Aguinaga, White said.

Taffolla also came under suspicion because of his knowledge of specific details of the crime. White said witnesses involved in the investigation viewed photographs of Taffolla, Rivera and Aguinaga and identified them all as suspects.

After the three men were arrested this week, Taffolla recanted his prior statements, telling detectives he was lying. Police said that during a lineup of suspects Wednesday, an undisclosed number of witnesses viewed the three men but only one witness made an identification--picking out Taffolla.

But citing the reluctance of the witnesses and the lack of corroborating identifications, the lone identification of Taffolla was not enough to charge him with murder, White said.

“We are going to have to have more corroborative evidence,” White said. “We acted on good faith on information we had--witnesses’ statements and so forth. . . .

“We had enough for probable cause . . . but there again the information you need for an arrest warrant or search warrant is certainly short of what you need for a conviction.”

The district attorney’s office referred comment on the case to the police.

Because of the brutal nature of the killings, witnesses have been reluctant to talk to police, detectives said.

“It has been very difficult for us to get any of them to talk to us,” said Detective Mike Mejia, the lead investigator on the case.

“One of the aspects is the concern about the danger of these people being back on the street,” White said of the suspects. “I think witnesses are obviously reluctant to cooperate when you have that condition.”