Riverside investigators link murders to man on death row

RIVERSIDE – A man sitting on California’s death row has been linked to the killings of two people 20 years after their deaths, said Riverside County investigators this week.

Alfredo Rolando Prieto, 44, on death row since 1992 for the rape and murder of an Ontario teen-age girl, has been linked to the 1990 killings of couple Stacey Siegrist, 19, and Tony Gianuzzi, 21.

Prieto has been connected as a suspect in at least nine murders and convicted on three. He is facing death sentences in California and Virginia, where he received a death sentence last week for two killings. Police also believe he had either two or three unidentified accomplices.

A DNA match led investigators to Prieto as the suspect in the killing of Siegrist, of Ontario, and Gianuzzi, of Rubidoux, said Riverside Sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Brown. Siegrist was sexually assaulted, shot twice, while Gianuzzi was bound at the wrists and ankles and shot twice.

Their bodies were discovered in Rubidoux, in northwestern Riverside County.

The next step in the process, said Brown, is turning over the case to the Riverside County district attorney’s office to determine if new charges will be filed.

Riverside area detectives were recently able to begin reviewing 84 unsolved homicides due to a national DNA testing grant, Brown said. The Siegrist-Gianuzzi murders are the fourth such case that detectives have managed to connect since the grant was awarded.

Prieto’s killing reportedly occurred on Sept. 2, 1990. Records state that he and two other suspects kidnapped three women in Ontario during a home burglary. Prieto raped and killed Yvette Woodruff, 15, while two others raped two other women and stabbed them. Both women survived and eventually identified Prieto and his accomplices.

All three men were sentenced to the death penalty.