Suspect in 2002 killing extradited from Australia

BARSTOW — After a five-year international legal battle, a man wanted in the killing of a Lenwood woman has been returned to California and will stand trial in Barstow.

According to Deputy District Attorney Jim Hill, Lawrence Rivera, 36, has been extradited from Australia and is in the custody of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Hill said Rivera will be arraigned on Monday at the Barstow court house on murder charges for the killing of Kristina Garcia.

Garcia’s body was found in the desert near Yermo in May 2002. After investigators questioned Rivera, who was a co-worker with Garcia at Raytheon Corporation at Fort Irwin, about the killing he fled the country, previous reports indicate. He was arrested in September 2002 by authorities in Bathurst, Australia, about 200 miles from Sydney. In December 2002, the Australian courts ordered Rivera extradited back to California after the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office agreed not to seek the death penalty in the case.

Rivera appealed the extradition order many times, taking the case to the High Court of the Federal Court of Australia.

“It’s been going for a long time,” Hill said.

Sheriff’s deputies questioned Rivera in the Garcia case before her body was found. Garcia was originally reported missing several days before her body was found when co-workers found her child at home alone. It is believed that Rivera fled after authorities questioned him. He was reported on the East Coast of the United States and in Amsterdam, Holland. According to previous reports, Rivera was also implicated in the 1998 death of a 3-year-old girl in Germany, the daughter of a woman with whom he lived. The child died of injuries sustained while in Rivera’s care.

Although never charged with that crime, Rivera served a four-year sentence in an Army prison for unrelated charges and was released in November 2001.

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