Suspect in Dancer’s Death Extradited to Pasadena

Pasadena police announced Friday that they had taken into custody a fugitive extradited from Mexico to stand trial in connection with the brutal 1999 killing of a 17-year-old aspiring flamenco dancer.

Johnny Andres Ortiz was flown to Los Angeles late Thursday and escorted by FBI agents to the Pasadena Police Department, police said. He is expected to be arraigned in Pasadena Superior Court on Tuesday in connection with the February 1999 stabbing of Maria Isabel Fernandez, his onetime girlfriend and a student at Pasadena City College.

Police allege that Ortiz, 29, fled across the border after he flew into a jealous rage and stabbed the rising flamenco star more than 40 times with a six-inch kitchen knife in her Harkness Avenue apartment.

Shortly before the attack, Fernandez had broken off her relationship with Ortiz, police said.

“This was an horrendous crime. I cannot express in words my admiration for the detectives who spent hundreds of hours looking for this guy and never gave up,” Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian said at a news conference.

Ortiz was extradited from Mexico after the district attorney’s office agreed not to seek the death penalty against the Colombian native. Treaties with Mexico do not allow for the extradition of suspects to the United States in cases involving capital punishment, authorities say.

The victim’s father, Miguel Fernandez, who crusaded to find his daughter’s suspected killer, told reporters Friday that Ortiz should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“Not in a special prison--maybe in Jurassic Park,” he said. “Only a dinosaur that has a very small brain with very primitive instincts could do that, because a human being would not do whatever this guy did.”

The extradition was the culmination of a 19-month investigation involving Pasadena police, the FBI and Mexican authorities.

Mexican agents arrested Ortiz in March on the basis of tips from viewers of the popular Spanish-language television series “The Cristina Show.” Fernandez’s father appeared on the show to appeal for help in finding his daughter’s killer.

At the time of his arrest, Ortiz was living under an alias in Mexico City and selling cars for a living, police said.