Murder Charges Dropped, Man Still Faces Deportation

Hours after the Orange County District Attorney’s office dropped murder charges in the stabbing deaths of his mother and brother and shifted blame to an alleged serial killer, Eder Giovanni Herrera remains in custody awaiting possible deportation.

Herrera, a 24-year-old former Esperanza High School student has been incarcerated since Oct. 26, the day after police found the bodies of his mother, Raquel Estrada, 53, and his brother, Juan Herrera, 34, in their home in Yorba Linda. Between them, the two had been stabbed more than 90 times. Herrera had been charged with the double murders and faced life in prison when investigators connected the murders to Herera’s former classmate Itzcotal "Izzy" Ocampo, who is suspected of stabbing to death four homeless men in December.

In a press conference announcing his decision to drop the charges against Herrera, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said Herrera would be released from jail Friday night. Rackauckas told reporters that ``we no longer have sufficient evidence to hold Mr. Herrera in custody. If he's indeed not culpable for these murders, I don't think it would be right to keep him in custody over the weekend."

He did not mention that Herrera would be transferred from the jail into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be held in the Santa Ana Federal Detention Center pending possible deportation.

However, at 9:15 p.m. Friday, Herrera was transferred into federal custody because he had previously admitted to being in the country illegally, said Lt. Joe Balicki, of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

On Friday, police confirmed a DNA link between Ocampo and the murders, said Rackauckas. Monday, Ocampo will be charged with the December murders of four homeless men, along with the Estrada-Herrera murders.

- City News Service contributed to this report.