Photo: Zachary Goemaat
It was a bullet to the back of the head at a factory party that stopped an Orange County man from getting home one Friday night in early autumn. Anaheim police found Julio Cesar Muñoz dead late in the morning of September 29th, 2018, near a dumpster enclosure in an industrial area of Anaheim, California.
Johnathan Rowe
Since that moment, city homicide detectives had sought to identify suspects in the murder of the 36-year-old Placentia man. The case remained open until the arrest of three suspects in late January 2019. It is the city’s final unsolved homicide case from the previous year.
Factory parties, like the one in question at the 1200 block of North Sunshine Way, located in the north-western quadrant of the 57 and 91 freeway interchange, would typically include revelers’ inhalation of nitrous oxide, or “nos”, and participation in other illicit activities, an Anaheim police media statement said.
Larry Douglass
Anaheim Police Department detectives thus interviewed dozens of witnesses and reviewed video footage of the party, eventually issuing 20 search warrants. They ultimately identified Larry Robert Douglass II, aged 19 of Artesia; Johnathan Michael Rowe, aged 19 of Santa Ana ; and Zachary Jay Goemaat, aged 19 of Santa Ana, as suspects in the homicide.
On January 29, 2019, police arrested Larry Douglass and Johnathan Rowe. The following day, they arrested Zachary Goemaat. All three arrests occurred without incident, and the suspects were booked into the Anaheim Detention Facility for murder. They were subsequently transferred to the Orange County Jail, being held in lieu of $1 million bail.
While the police department kept details on possible motives confidential, it said that the killing was not believed to have been gang-motivated. The Orange County District Attorney’s office received the case for review and to determine what charges would be alleged.
