FEATURED |
By Royal Calkins
The family of Aracely Zavala is learning not to get their hopes up. It has been 10 years to the day since the King City woman was hurled to her death by a fast-moving SUV driven by her town’s mortician, Robert Eddington. Though friends and family suspect that he meant to run her over, he vigorously denied it and the initial investigation by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office came close to being no investigation at all.
Sheriff Tina Nieto said eight months ago that she was reopening the case following a Voices investigation into the adequacy of the initial inquiry. She acknowledged this week that the renewed effort never hit full stride.
She said that while her office had done its duty as the county coroner, determining the cause of death, she said, “We are trying to fix the lack of recent follow-up by my office.”
The original cases and a vanished file
Although at least two CHP officers pushed for a criminal investigation from the start, the CHP turned the matter over to the Sheriff’s Office, which didn’t start any work on the case until a full year after Zavala had been buried in the King City Cemetery. And then the investigation was so limited that one of two detectives on the case, Dan Robison, called it a coverup orchestrated by then-Sheriff Steve Bernal. The other detective, Marty Opseth, declined to comment. Friends and relatives of Zavala, 42, told the CHP in the weeks following her death that she was a part-time sex worker who had been in a relationship with Eddington for a number of years. They said she had become afraid after telling him she would curtail some activities unless he paid her more.

Paul Range, an on-and-off boyfriend of Zavala, said she also had mentioned blackmailing Eddington. Range said he told her that if she was going to do it, she should stop talking about it because talk could prove dangerous.
One longtime friend told Voices last year that Zavala lived with her for a time and that Eddington would pick her up from her home to take her to parties.
Zavala was hit from behind on a dark frontage road while inexplicably walking away from town late at night. Eddington told the CHP he was driving home to Paso Robles after drinking a few beers at his Eddington Funeral Home. The CHP said it determined that he was not intoxicated.
Eddington said he didn’t know what he had hit at first but saw what appeared to be a woman’s hair whipping across his windshield. Friends and relatives of Zavala theorize, with no real evidence, that the pair had been together and had quarreled, resulting in her being left alone on the road.
Two CHP officers conducted a brief investigation of their own in the days following the death. There were conflicting accounts of why they didn’t finish. Their sergeant, Dan Wheeler, said the officers didn’t have the right experience to handle potential homicide. Others in the office said Wheeler didn’t want to handle it because he was friendly with Eddington through sports in the community. Eddington frequently umpired baseball and softball games in the area.
Wheeler couldn’t be reached to comment. Six calls to the switchboard at the CHP office in King City between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday went unanswered. The trend continued Wednesday morning and into the afternoon.
Under questioning by a sheriff’s investigator and a District Attorney’s Office investigator more than a year after the death, Eddington denied knowing Zavala and denied trying to kill her. The Sheriff’s Office had become briefly and belatedly involved in the case after Zavala’s family hired a lawyer. The District Attorney’s Office became briefly involved after a sister of Zavala lobbied then-District Attorney Dean Flippo to look into it.
It was hard to tell exactly what the initial Sheriff’s Office investigation amounted to because the detectives’ reports were lost or destroyed after a journalist requested access to them before Nieto succeeded Steve Bernal as sheriff. That isn’t supposed to happen and almost never does.
“We are trying to fix the lack of recent follow-up by my office; however the MCSO did their job as the coroner when the case first occurred.” Sheriff Tina Nieto
Eddington has declined several requests for an interview. He is a well-known member of the King City business community and was one of several King City-area residents who were Bernal’s first campaign contributors when he first ran for office in 2014. One of Eddington’s close friends was Bernal’s campaign treasurer.
Nieto’s ‘reopening’ of the case
It is now eight months since Bernal’s successor, Nieto, said she was reopening the case. There apparently has been at least some work on the reopened inquiry. A Public Records Act request filed with the Sheriff’s Office a week ago prompted a reply that said there is now some information in the file but it would not be released because law enforcement agencies aren’t required to release reports. State law also doesn’t bar them from releasing reports.
On May 17 of last year, Nieto met at her office with four of Zavala’s closest relatives and introduced them to Commander Michael Darlington and detective Mike Smith. The family said they understood that they had been assigned to the case. Smith was later replaced with another detective.
The family turned over some paperwork and other materials they thought might help with the investigation.
When asked about the status of the renewed investigation, Nieto said Tuesday that the CHP is the lead in the criminal investigation while her staff is only the lead in the coroner’s end of the inquiry. The coroner’s office, part of Nieto’s department, determined weeks after Zavala’s death that it was accidental. Coroners’ offices don’t do criminal investigations and it would be highly unusual for them to become involved in a criminal investigation years after the fact.
Nieto added, “I still have my people reaching out and I apologize for the confusion of whether they were interviewed or not.” She was referring to South County people who told Voices and Zavala’s relatives that they wanted to share information about Zavala’s relationship with Eddington. Two said they had left messages with Nieto’s investigations unit with no response.
Voices has also attempted to provide similar information to the investigations unit in the Sheriff’s Office but was told to contact the department’s press office. That also produced no results.
Nieto continued, “We are trying to fix the lack of recent follow-up by my office; however the MCSO did their job as the coroner when the case first occurred. Also I agree the new information and/or evidence needs to be documented to determine if we needed to notify the CHP of our findings, and/or let the family know that information/possible evidence was such that it may or may not change the findings.
“As I explained to the family before, this may or may not change the findings by the CHP. But I stand by the belief that the CHP remains the lead agency.”
Nieto did not mention staffing levels in her department but it, like many in the nation, is understaffed. Numerous deputies have complained that investigative work is compromised in part by the need to meet a federally mandated staffing level in the jail.
One of Aracely’s brothers, Eddie Zavala, said this week, “I do feel like the system let her down. I feel like it usually happens to people who are dehumanized. Low income, homeless, of color, etc. People with power get away with stuff like this.”
A sister, Clementina, who has been the family spokeswoman since the fatality, declined to comment and would not confirm reports that she has been shopping for a lawyer.
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The fact that the evidence just vanished from the MCSO is an outrage! The fact that the new Sheriff now claims CHP was the lead and not them but yet they demanded evidence be turned over to them threatening o strict ion of justice only to claim later that they were not in charge of the investigation that CHP was – is highly unethical! These actions need to be reprimanded and kept from reoccurring. The phone records from the victims public phone need to be acquired and the community deserves a better leader to make sure things like this are not failed again. Letting “the good ol boys” get away with murder must be stopped! This family deserves justice! Everyone that had a part in its cover up should also be brought to justice!
*obstruction
Victim’s government provided phone not public.
Letting my emotions and frustration get in the way from proofreading before I hit send.