Two Men Face Hearing In Grisly Slaying

Six months ago, someone dumped a dismembered body in the backyard of a run-down house on the outer fringes of west Fresno.
It was discovered days later. The body's hands, feet and head were missing.
Police later determined that the remains belonged to Mary Padilla, 27, a Sanger fruit packer and mother of two.
Now two men -- Alexander Harwell, 48, and Lorenzo Sepulveda Jr., 25 -- are charged with the murder and face a preliminary hearing in Fresno County Superior Court scheduled to begin Dec. 1. A judge will decide whether they must stand trial.
Search warrant affidavits filed by the Fresno County Sheriff's Department suggest that Harwell and Sepulveda shot Padilla -- who was Sepulveda's off-and-on girlfriend -- inside a motel off Highway 99 in mid-May. She was later dismembered.
Most of Padilla's body was found lying on its back in a backyard ditch at 5537 W. Shields Ave. on May 17. The only identifying marks were three tattoos that her family members later recognized.
Both Harwell and Sepulveda have pleaded not guilty. Neither could be reached for comment.
Padilla's killing was the first of two dismemberment slayings in Fresno County this year. Last month, Fresno paralegal Brian Waldron, 50, was arrested after police say he confessed that he killed and then dismembered Jonathan Louis Taylor, 21, on Oct. 24 before burying him in a shallow grave in the Sierra.
Harwell, a father of four who used to help run the landmark Klein's Truck Stop restaurant off the Herndon Avenue exit of Highway 99, and Sepulveda, a Sanger gang member, were staying with Padilla at the Quality Inn motel on Ashlan Avenue off Highway 99 in early May, according to the Sheriff's Department affidavits.
On May 13, they moved to the nearby Travel Lodge and checked in late at night. The next day, the affidavits state, a woman who lived near the house on Shields Avenue said she saw Harwell drive several times to the house, which was unoccupied and sits on a sprawling piece of property.
Two days later, a man cleaning the property discovered the body.
The house previously was rented by Grace Cadenhead, a former manager at Klein's restaurant who says she used to be friends with Harwell but was later threatened by him after she caught him stealing money from the business.
The affidavits state another former restaurant employee, Shannon Rhodes, heard about the dismembered body on the news and sent Harwell a text message -- as a joke -- that asked whether he had dumped the body.
Harwell responded with a text that said he didn't know what she was talking about. When Rhodes told him the news, Harwell replied: 'As bad as da last 30 days u cud really make my day, week, month, year, decade, century & millennium if u can confirm it was Grace! Pleeeze, pretty pleeze!'
Rhodes said she later realized the irony of their conversation: 'It was supposed to be a joke.'
On May 21, Harwell and Sepulveda left for Las Vegas at night, stayed at a hotel and slept through the morning, then returned that afternoon, the affidavits state.
A person familiar with the case, who did not want to be identified because the investigation is ongoing, said that authorities believe that Harwell and Sepulveda may have taken the road trip to Las Vegas to dump the body parts along the way. The missing parts have yet to be discovered.
On May 23, detectives searched Harwell and Sepulveda's room at the Travel Lodge and found what they suspected was the murder scene: a garbage bag containing plastic bags with dried blood on them. A bullet hole in the couch and a bullet lodged in the wall. Traces of blood in the bathtub.
Detectives noted in an affidavit that two bed sheets and two pillows were missing. The affidavits said the bedding could have been used to conceal a body. A maid told detectives that Harwell had requested no room cleaning service during his stay.
The next morning, Padilla's younger sister, Olga Padilla, got a call from a man who identified himself as Harwell. In an interview, she said that the caller told her he had killed Mary Padilla and that Sepulveda was not responsible for the crime. Olga Padilla, however, believes both men were involved in her sister's murder.
Mark Broughton, a defense attorney representing Harwell, said his client denies ever confessing to the crime, but he declined to comment further.
The Sheriff's Department found Harwell sitting in a car in Sanger the same day Olga Padilla received the call and arrested him.
Sepulveda disappeared, but authorities arrested him three months later in Los Angeles.
Later, detectives got a search warrant for a storage unit that was registered to Mary Padilla but listed Sepulveda and massage chairs uk Harwell as people allowed to access it. Inside, they found shorts and massage therapy degree pants with possible blood stains, as well as hunting knives and a black plastic bag with a shotgun, cleaning supplies, latex glovesa pick mattock -- a tool resembling a pick axe with a digging blade on one end, typically about 3 inches wide.