By Kimberly Veklerov and Michael Bodley
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — A young couple meticulously planned for days the slaying of a 21-year-old volunteer with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, who was found bludgeoned, stabbed and burned almost beyond recognition, prosecutors charged in court documents filed Monday.
Laura Rodgers and her boyfriend, Curtys Taylor, were both charged with murder in the death of Karla Ramirez-Segoviano. The Oakland couple, both 23, were ordered held without bail at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on Monday, records show.
Rodgers lured Ramirez-Segoviano, who police said was her friend, to a creek bed in Arroyo Viejo Park in East Oakland, where she was killed, according to the Alameda County district attorney’s office.
After Ramirez-Segoviano’s body was discovered in the park around noon on Thursday — so badly burned that the coroner had trouble lifting a fingerprint — police picked up Rodgers for questioning and she admitted to her role in the slaying that investigators called “senseless” and “heinous.” Rodgers, an Oakland resident, was placed under arrest late Thursday — the same day the body was discovered — while Taylor was arrested early the next morning.
Ramirez-Segoviano, a sheriff’s department volunteer Explorer, had been reported missing by her parents the night before when she didn’t come home after dropping off an acquaintance in San Leandro, said Lt. Roland Holmgren of the Oakland Police Department’s homicide division.
It wasn’t clear exactly when Ramirez-Segoviano was killed or why she was targeted.
In the planned cold-blooded killing, Rodgers had Ramirez-Segoviano pick her up and talked her into driving her to Arroyo Viejo Park, according to court records. Taylor was waiting at the park with a can of gasoline when Rodgers and the victim arrived, records say.
Rodgers is suspected of repeatedly stabbing Ramirez-Segoviano to death as her boyfriend doused her body with the gasoline, prosecutors said. The alleged killers then dropped a match, igniting the woman’s body, prosecutors said.
Rodgers and Taylor then gathered up the incriminating evidence — the knife believed to be the murder weapon, the gas can and Ramirez-Segoviano’s car keys — and took off, the district attorney’s office said.
The evidence was later located inside a trash bin at a Days Inn in Hayward, authorities said.
Both suspects briefly appeared in court Monday and were referred to the public defender for representation. They are scheduled to return to court Tuesday for arraignment and to enter pleas. In addition to murder, Rodgers is charged with use of a deadly weapon.
In jail booking records, Rodgers listed her occupation as a postal worker. Taylor has no employment listed.
Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, said the volunteer program Ramirez-Segoviano was involved in can serve as a “step into law enforcement” for some, but it wasn’t clear whether she harbored those aspirations.
“Our worst fears were realized” when the coroner identified the body, Nelson said.
©2016 the San Francisco Chronicle