SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) -- For the retrial of Sierra LaMar's accused killer, opening statements began Monday with a prosecutor showing jurors the 15-year-old girl smiling in her Ann Sobrato High School photograph.
Antolin Garcia-Torres, 35, is charged with kidnapping and murdering a high school cheerleader whom he had never met.
On March 16, 2012, LaMar vanished from her Morgan Hill neighborhood while she was walking a half-mile from her mother's house to the school bus stop, Deputy District Attorney O’Bryan Kenney said. The last thing LaMar and her mother told each other that morning was, "I love you."
In opening statements, the prosecutor said, "Sierra was supposed to go on a school bus. She was supposed to finish high school, live a long life, a full life. None of that happened, because the defendant stole her away. He grabbed her, dragged her, he put her in the back of his car, he closed the door, and he drove away."
Sierra LaMar is seen in a school photo. (Image via Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office)
The prosecutor said evidence will show this was a stranger kidnapping case -- every parent's worst nightmare. LaMar's body was never found. Search teams found her cellphone in a muddy field near her home, and LaMar's bag of belongings -- including the clothes she wore that day -- hidden inside a cactus plant behind a shed in Morgan Hill.
"That morning, Antolin Garcia-Torres killed Sierra. He hid her body. He left Sierra naked at 15 years old. Traces of that man were found on Sierra's clothes. This defendant could hide her body, but he could not hide the evidence," Kenney told the jury.
Garcia-Torres sat silently in the courtroom Monday wearing a gray suit, white tie, and thick black-rimmed glasses. LaMar's parents sat in the front row of the courtroom gallery.
Kenney played an audio recording of a 911 call, when LaMar's mother first reported her daughter missing to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. The mother, Marlene, told the dispatcher, "We are worried that she was abducted."
Antolin Garcia-Torres speaks to his attorney on June 29, 2026 in Santa Clara County Superior Court. (Pool Photo)
Marlene was worried because her text messages throughout the school day went unanswered by her daughter. When the mother arrived home from work, the front door was locked and her daughter was not there. LaMar's friends said they never saw her at school.
The dispatcher asked, "Has she run away in the past at all?" Marlene replied, "No," and requested an Amber Alert.
As jurors listened to the 911 call, Marlene quietly wiped tears from her eyes in the courtroom.
A storm poured rain on Morgan Hill while search teams knocked on doors, searching the neighborhood for any sign of LaMar. As weeks passed, the search expanded across a 1,900 square mile radius.
"Sierra was likely hidden somewhere hard to find by design," the prosecutor said. Kenney told the jury that LaMar's body could have decomposed quickly, been carried away by coyotes, or washed away by storms.
LaMar's last communication was a text message she sent to her friend, promising to bring makeup for the friend when she arrived at school. She also snapped a selfie using her computer. The prosecutor showed jurors the selfie, noting that LaMar had curled her hair to get ready for school, and she was wearing a San Jose Sharks hockey sweatshirt that was later found in the cactus plants. Dirt found on the sweatshirt and her jeans proved someone dragged her along the ground, the prosecutor said.
This is the last photograph ever taken of Sierra LaMar. (Image via Santa Clara County Superior Court)
Traces of LaMar's DNA were detected in Garcia-Torres' car, including a single strand of her hair found in a rope in his trunk. Kenney showed jurors a photograph of a rope and gloves inside the trunk, and explained how a crime lab computed statistics for DNA mixtures.
The prosecutor also showed the jury interior photographs of the car. He said a backseat passenger door handle had a DNA mixture that was "2.8 quintillion times more likely that the DNA mixture contains Sierra and 3 others, than that it contains 4 others (who are not LaMar)." Kenney said LaMar's DNA was "all over" the backseat.
Kenney said he anticipates that Garcia-Torres' defense team will attempt to rip apart DNA evidence as tainted and inconclusive. "You are going to hear a fundamental attack on DNA evidence in this case," Kenney told jurors.
Garcia-Torres' alibi, which he told investigators in April of 2012 while he was interrogated by sergeants, was that he went fishing alone at a reservoir on the morning of March 16, 2012. A surveillance camera positioned near Garcia-Torres' trailer park recorded his car leaving home at 7 a.m. Kenney said there's zero evidence of the suspected killer's whereabouts for six hours: between 7 a.m. and when he arrived at a bank in Morgan Hill just before 1 p.m. He didn't make or answer any phone calls.
During the interrogation, Garcia-Torres admitted that he drove by LaMar's bus stop around the same time she disappeared.
Kenney played a video tape in the courtroom showing Garcia-Torres in the interrogation room.
One sergeant told the murder suspect that investigators found "a lot of evidence" with DNA that was being analyzed in a crime lab. "If it does come back with your DNA, what would be the reason?" the sergeant asked.
"I mean, it's kind of embarrassing. I like masturbating. I do masturbate in my car," Garcia-Torres replied. The murder suspect said he often uses napkins to clean up, and throws the napkins out his car's window.
Kenney tolds jurors that Garcia-Torres' fishing alibi was a lie. "He had to come up with a story," the prosecutor said.
According to the prosecutor, Garcia-Torres found LaMar walking toward her bus stop, kidnapped her, drove her somewhere, and killed her. "He picked someone small, young, and vulnerable. We can't prove exactly where she died, how she died, or what was done to her before she died," he said.
"The defendant had plenty of time in that six hours to take Sierra somewhere far away. He could have certainly made it to the ocean, the mountains, the woods, any one of a number of places of wilderness that would have been quiet and alone," Kenney said. "And once he killed her, he was able to hide her, all before her family knew she was missing."
Ahead of retrial, prosecutors present motives in Sierra LaMar case
Earlier this year, Garcia-Torres' previous murder conviction in the LaMar case was overturned by a higher appeals court. Instead of serving out his life prison sentence, Garcia-Torres was granted a retrial with a new jury that will decide his guilt or innocence.
His defense attorney, Alfonso Lopez, began delivering his opening statements Monday afternoon.
Lopez said the prosecution's timeline is "impossible," and an alternative suspect was spotted by a witness. "Mr. Garcia-Torres could not have committed the acts the prosecution is accusing him of. The only fair, just, and honest verdict you can reach in this case is not guilty," he told the jury.
The defense attorney showed jurors a list of critical evidence that was never found by investigators:
Lopez described LaMar's rain-soaked bag of belongings as an "important clue," but "proper protocols" were not followed by investigators. Evidence was contaminated and lost by the sheriff's office at its mobile command center, he said.
"Cross-contamination definitely would have happened in a situation like this," Lopez said.
Sierra LaMar
The defense attorney said an "important eye witness" will testify at trial who lived near LaMar's bus stop. While the witness was driving to work, she saw a suspicious brown car that was stopped at 7:23 a.m.
"This car was in the exact area where Sierra's phone was found. The car jumps out in front of (the witness' car), almost running her off the road. It's driving erratically. It scares her," Lopez told jurors.
The retrial is expected to stretch over three months, continuing into 2027. Prosecutors will call their first witness to the stand Tuesday.
