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Michael Azzaro Namus File
Missing from Northridge, Los Angeles County
16 y/o Male, White / Caucasian
5'6, 175 lbs
Brown hair; Hazel eyes
May have been wearing glasses
Accessories: Pager
The car was found on Imperial Highway in the Lennox area on February 15, 1993.
Michael Azzaro California DOJ
Trial Opens in Case of Missing Northridge Boy : Courts: Despite the lack of a body or crime scene, man is charged with killing Michael Azzaro, 16.
More than 18 months after her 16-year-old son disappeared, Rosalie Azzaro still has trouble thinking of him in the past tense.
www.latimes.com
Trial Opens in Case of Missing Northridge Boy : Courts: Despite the lack of a body or crime scene, man is charged with killing Michael Azzaro, 16.
BY ANN W. O’NEILLAUG. 24, 1994 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
More than 18 months after her 16-year-old son disappeared, Rosalie Azzaro still has trouble thinking of him in the past tense.
“Did you have a son named Michael?” a prosecutor asked Tuesday, as Evans York, who is accused of killing Michael Azzaro while taking his truck, went on trial in San Fernando Superior Court on a murder charge.
“I do,” she replied at first.
“I did,” she corrected herself.
Even though York has been charged with first-degree murder, there has been no body for Azzaro’s family to bury, no crime scene for the police to analyze. Azzaro disappeared without a trace.
Several months after he dropped from sight, Michael’s driver’s license turned up mysteriously in the mail, his mother testified. It came in an envelope addressed to her son with no return address and no note.
Deputy Dist. Atty. John Asari told jurors Tuesday that York, 20, an acquaintance of Michael’s, was seen driving Michael’s new red Isuzu Rodeo the day after he disappeared. Phone company records show that someone telephoned York’s guardian several times that weekend using Michael’s car phone, he said.
York told some of Michael’s friends before the disappearance that he was thinking about “jacking”--robbing--him, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing. Later, he told other friends the Rodeo was his, witnesses at that hearing testified.
A woman named April Cotton overheard York at the Golden Bird restaurant in South-Central Los Angeles, the prosecution contends. She testified at the preliminary hearing that York, talking to a friend in street slang, said:
“Blood, I can’t go back to the Valley . . . I snatched the blood up out of the car and I pulled out the strap on him, and when I busted, I just jumped in the s--- and boned out.”
Los Angeles Police Detective Neal May offered this translation at the preliminary hearing:
“I took the individual out of the car. I pulled a gun on him and when I shot, I just jumped in the car and left.”
Asari, who said Cotton will testify for the prosecution, contends the remarks she says she overheard amount to York’s admission to the crime. It is arguably the most compelling evidence in a difficult case built on circumstantial evidence.
Deputy Public Defender Kenneth Lezin gave the jury no hints of his strategy, declining to make an opening statement until later in the trial. But outside the courtroom he later told reporters that the prosecution can’t prove York killed Azzaro.
“I think he may well be alive,” the defense attorney said. “Maybe he just wanted to disappear. . . . There’s no body. There’s no witnesses, and there’s no case.”
Much of the testimony Tuesday centered on Michael’s habits, and the circumstances of his disappearance. He was a sophomore at Granada Hills High School and lived in Northridge. Most of his friends, including York, lived in a gated community about a mile from his house.
His mother often chided him about acting as a “taxi” driver for his friends, many of whom were younger than he was because he had repeated kindergarten.
She said he was temporarily paralyzed by an inoperable brain tumor at age 3, when he was given two to five years to live. The tumor also affected his sight and made school work slow and difficult for him, she said. He survived, but had physical problems, she said.
Because of his physical condition, he stayed in constant touch with his family through his car phone and pager as a teen-ager, she said. “Michael was what we called a phone-a-holic,” she said. “He’d call all the time, sometimes every half hour.”
While his parents were returning from a vacation in Russia on Feb. 13, 1993, Michael pulled away from his family’s Northridge home in his red Rodeo, telling his grandmother not to defrost dinner for him. The next day, his parents returned.
His things were there--his video games, his videos, even his favorite Notre Dame football jacket--but Michael was not there to greet them, his mother testified.
They tried his car phone several times and received no answer. They repeatedly called his pager.
“Nothing.”
He was last seen by the mother of his best friend, Doug Paul. According to court records, Paul told police after Michael’s disappearance that York had said he was looking to “jack”--meaning rob--Michael.
Friends also told police that Michael Azzaro was interested in buying a .45-caliber pistol like York’s, and York told him he knew where he could get one, according to court records.
A 16-year-old friend testified Tuesday that Michael and York planned a trip to Los Angeles to “get money” to finance a deal to buy three pounds of marijuana.
He last saw Michael at breakfast the day he disappeared, he testified, saying: “I told him he should not go to L.A. I told him, ‘You do not belong there.’ There was nothing I could do to stop him.”
