A Glendora-area man who prosecutors said plotted the kidnapping and killing of an acquaintance he claimed had stolen marijuana from him was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday, Feb. 2.
Matthew Capiendo, 27, will spend the rest of his life behind bars for what a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge called one of the worst murder cases she had ever presided over: In 2018, Capiendo and four accomplices ambushed then 20-year-old Julian Hamori-Andrade inside a home in an unincorporated area near Glendora where Capiendo was renting a room.
According to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deparmtent homicide detectives, Capiendo and the others then proceeded to savagely beat Hamori-Andrade until he was unconscious. The group then took the injured man’s body to Azusa Canyon, where they further beat him, then tossed him down an embankment off Highway 39.
All of that violence, law enforcement officials said at the time of the group’s arrests, was over what Capiendo told the others was stolen marijuana.
The victim’s mother, Desiree Andrade, told Capiendo that she had waited five years and eight months to be able to “call you a murderer.”
“You are a monster,” said Desiree Andrade, the victim’s mother, told Capiendo inside the Downtown L.A. courtroom on Friday.
Andrade told Capiendo she had waited almost six years to “call you a murderer,” saying earlier that week she had driven to the spot in Azusa Canyon where Capiendo and his accomplices had dumped her son’s body.
Capiendo — who was also known as Matthew Martin, Matt Luzon or Matthew Luzon Martin-Capiendo — was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping in November last year. Judge Lisa B. Lench denied a motion by Capiendo’s attorneys for a new trial.
All members of the group who attacked and killed Hamori-Andrade have been tried, convicted and sentenced since 2021.
All were around the same age as the victim when the beating and killing occurred in May 2018. And all…
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