Bad Rap: How Aspiring Hip-hop Star Herbie Gonzalez Got Pegged as the Manhattan Beach Housekeeper Murderer

“You have to take all your clothes off and put them in a bag,” he said. “So we’re standing there butt-ass naked for 30 minutes, and half these guys are checking you out. Suddenly the guards are telling me to turn around, bend over and spread my butt to make sure you got nothing in your anal cavity. I was like, no way, man. I’ve been naked with the football team in the shower, but that’s not the same as some cop telling you to take your clothes off and, ‘Bend over, punk.’”

Gonzalez was issued a jail ID number and County blues, the navy-blue jump suit that inmates wear at their early court appearances. Then he was sent to yet another Twin Towers holding tank. Consumed by anger, isolation, homesickness, an impending sense of his own death and a deep longing for Piñon and the children they had dreamed about, Gonzalez came up with some defiant lyrics that he later used in the chorus of a new song: “We don’t die, we just multiply.”

Thomas Sanders

Scene of the nightmare: Herbie Gonzalez, back at the strip-mall parking lot where he was kept handcuffed for hours.

Thomas Sanders

Gonzalez in his bedroom-closet music studio

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More About

• Randy Seymour
• Herbie Gonzalez
• Herbert Orlando Gonzalez
• Murder and Homicide
• Crime

Detective Sergeant Randy Seymour had a big problem: Gonzalez’s DNA did not match the DNA found on the murder victim.

Despite Seymour’s high level of confidence that “Herbert” was “our boy,” the DNA wouldn’t prove his case. And nothing was found in the five-hour search of Gonzalez’s home that could link Gonzalez to Cabrera’s murder.

Still, the new information did not prove that Gonzalez wasn’t the man in the video and that he hadn’t been involved in the murder. Under California law, even if he didn’t commit the murder himself, he could be charged with the crime if he was involved in any way.

Meanwhile, the search warrant at Dreamer’s house had also failed to produce anything that would give the detectives probable cause to arrest him or link him to the murder. No white truck, no laptop, nothing. And Dreamer even had an alibi for the time of the murder, although Seymour later testified that he did not consider it solid. Nor did Dreamer’s DNA match the DNA left on the victim.

For his interrogation of Gonzalez, Seymour would have to resort to his worst-case scenario: He’d have to bluff.

Finally, the loudspeaker blared:Gonzalez 022.

“They escorted me back to a little room with no windows,” Gonzalez said. “There’s three people that look like detectives. Two big, beefy white guys and a mannish-looking white woman.”

Gonzalez was sure his nightmare was almost over.

“I’m eager to talk with these people. I have nothing to hide. I go to work every day. I’m proud of my life,” he said. “So I ask them, ‘What is this all about? Why am I here?’ ”

Before the formal interrogation began — or at least the recorded portion — Detective Seymour, “the guy in charge,” according to Gonzalez, introduced himself and Detective Gallagher. A Manhattan Beach Police Department homicide investigator was also in the room.

Gonzalez said he immediately asked for medical attention and that Seymour got angry, punched him in the stomach and told him to suck it up.

“After all I had been through for two days, that one punch in the gut broke my spirit,” Gonzalez said. “I felt like a beaten dog.”

In subsequent court testimony, Seymour denied that Gonzalez appeared ill, denied punching Gonzalez in the stomach and denied that he told him to suck it up. Seymour would testify that the introductions and the process of letting Gonzalez know what he had been arrested for — and of calming down a very emotional Gonzalez — took 30 to 40 minutes. Gonzalez said it took more than an hour. Despite the extended period of time before starting the recording and advising Gonzalez of his Miranda rights to keep silent and have a lawyer present, Seymour said that the detectives never asked their suspect any questions about the murder or made any accusations.

“We went in and spent some time explaining why he was in custody,” Seymour testified, “didn’t ask him any questions, didn’t ask him to respond to anything, just told him why he was in custody.”

But Gonzalez said that Seymour immediately handed Gonzalez a flier containing a grainy black-and-white picture taken from a videotape.

“Seymour says, ‘I have it all figured out,’ ” Gonzalez recalled. “I said, ‘What do you have all figured out?’ ”

When Seymour replied, “That’s you in the flier,” Gonzalez took a closer look at it. He admits he was startled by the similarity, at first glance and from a distance.

“I said, ‘Yeah, it could be me. But it’s not me,’ ” he explained. “And I said it could be a million other guys in L.A. Anybody under 5 foot 7 and going bald.”

Seymour, Gonzalez said, embarked upon a long monologue about a laptop computer taken from a very expensive home in Manhattan Beach. Finally he stopped and looked at Gonzalez for a response.

“I said, ‘I don’t steal, I have two jobs, I work hard, my mom is a very hard-working lady, and she would buy me a hundred laptops if I asked,’” he said. “‘I don’t need to steal anything.’”