San Jose: Cold-case investigation leads to arrest in 1987 strangling
SAN JOSE — The strangling death of a man inside an apartment next to Kelley Park nearly four decades ago now has a suspect, who has been arrested and charged following a cold-case investigation that matched his DNA with evidence from the unsolved homicide, authorities said.
Joseph Anthony Abeyta, 55, of San Jose, was charged with murder Friday in connection with the 1987 killing of 46-year-old Jesus Ibarra on Nordale Avenue.
A revived investigation by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s cold-case unit and the San Jose Police Department’s homicide unit reportedly matched DNA from crime-scene evidence to Abeyta. He was already being held in county jail for a pending gun-possession charge and for violating his parole supervision from prior convictions in 2019.
Abeyta was scheduled to be arraigned Friday on the murder charge. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
According to investigators, family members discovered Ibarra’s body with an electrical cord wrapped around his neck inside his Nordale Avenue apartment on April 22, 1987. The death was declared a homicide after an autopsy concluded that he died from neck trauma.
While Abeyta knew Ibarra — a machinist and sheet metal worker — neither he nor anyone else was identified as a suspect during the initial investigation. Authorities would learn later that Abeyta lived on Peach Court, three miles north of where the killing occurred and a block away from where Ibarra’s burned-out car was found.
Police and DA investigators revisited the case earlier this year and submitted DNA found on Ibarra’s body and at the crime scene into a law-enforcement forensic database. That produced a match to Abeyta, who, in addition to his pending weapons case, had past convictions for robbery and residential burglary.
Prosecutors allege that the killing might have been motivated by a robbery during which Abeyta took Ibarra’s gold chain, ring and car.
Authorities said this was the ninth time in 2024 that a cold case investigation has yielded a newly identified suspect. Acting SJPD Chief Paul Joseph lauded the partnership with the DA’s office and the “tenacity and dedication” of investigators, and District Attorney Jeff Rosen emphasized there “is no statute of limitations of finding, arresting and prosecuting people who hurt and kill the people of our community.”
Anyone with information for investigators can contact the SJPD homicide unit at 408-277-5283 or email Detective Sgt. John Van Den Broeck at 3829@sanjoseca.gov or Detective Amanda Estantino at 4339@sanjoseca.gov. The DA’s cold-case unit can be reached at 408-792-2466 or by email at coldcasetips@dao.sccgov.org.