The murder of Megan Barroso was committed by Vincent Henry Sanchez, a 31-year-old Simi Valley handyman who was already responsible for a five-year string of unsolved sexual assaults across Ventura County when he abducted the 20-year-old Moorpark College student in the early morning hours of July 5, 2001. Sanchez shot Barroso with an AK-47, dragged her from her rented car on Highway 23, and dumped her body in a ravine south of Simi Valley. He was convicted of first-degree murder in August 2003 and sentenced to death that November.
The Abduction on Highway 23
Barroso spent the evening of July 4, 2001, at a family barbecue and later with friends in the suburbs northwest of Los Angeles. Her best friend, Lindsay Gross, sprinkled red glitter in her hair during the celebrations. Around 2:45 a.m. on July 5, Barroso left a friend’s Newbury Park apartment to drive home in a rented green Pontiac Sunfire.1Oxygen. Megan Barroso Killed by Vincent Sanchez
Roughly 70 minutes later, deputies found her car abandoned and still running on a concrete median beneath a Highway 23 overpass near Moorpark.2Ventura County Star. Sanchez Admits Rapes, Killing Megan Barroso The Sunfire had five bullet holes: three through the windshield, one in the driver-side door, and one through the hood. Inside were blood on the steering wheel, gearshift, and seat, along with Barroso’s phone, purse, and a single sandal. Nearby, a crime scene technician recovered bullet fragments, six shell casings, and a cleaning rod belonging to an assault rifle.3Los Angeles Times. Preliminary Hearing in Sanchez Case Barroso was gone.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department organized search parties that combed remote canyons, and hundreds of volunteers joined the effort. On August 3, 2001, searchers found Barroso’s remains at the bottom of a rocky ravine south of Simi Valley, about 15 miles from where her car had been abandoned. She was identified by dental records and by the Irish Claddagh ring her mother had given her at 17.4Popular Mechanics. Glitter Solves Murder California Crime The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the abdomen.2Ventura County Star. Sanchez Admits Rapes, Killing Megan Barroso
The Serial Rapist Behind the Killing
Sanchez had been assaulting women across Ventura County since September 1996. He targeted young women, often entering their homes while they slept or kidnapping them at knifepoint. He wore a ski mask, photographed and videotaped his victims, and grew bolder and more violent as the years passed. The attacks went unsolved for five years.5Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Convicted of First-Degree Murder
His record before the Simi Valley assaults included a 1992 child abuse charge in Lancaster after he choked a girlfriend’s one-year-old daughter, a prior burglary conviction, a 1999 prowling arrest near Ojai, and a January 2001 restraining order obtained by a girlfriend who said he had broken into her home and threatened to kill her.6Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Criminal Background
The Roommate’s Discovery
The break came by accident. On July 26, 2001, Sanchez was arrested for burglarizing a neighbor’s home. From jail, he called one of his roommates at the house they shared on Woodrow Avenue in Simi Valley and asked him to get rid of a bag Sanchez had left in a recycling bin outside. The roommate looked inside instead. He found women’s jewelry, underwear, photographs of partially clothed women, and videotapes. One tape showed a masked man raping a woman. Roommate Josh Reno later testified that the woman “looked like she was scared out of her mind” and that he was “pretty sure” the masked man was Sanchez.7Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Trial Testimony on Roommate Discovery The roommates called 911.8Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Trial Testimony on Evidence Discovery
Simi Valley detective Kathleen Shatz recognized several women in the photographs as victims from open rape investigations. Detectives obtained a search warrant for the Woodrow Avenue home, and Sanchez was arrested the next day on suspicion of the serial assaults.8Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Trial Testimony on Evidence Discovery In October 2001, he pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges involving 14 women, a plea that alone carried life in prison without parole. He did not plead to the murder.2Ventura County Star. Sanchez Admits Rapes, Killing Megan Barroso
The Physical Evidence Tying Sanchez to Barroso
Once he was in custody, the case against Sanchez for Barroso’s killing came together quickly. His roommate had noticed that the household AK-47 and ammunition were missing for about a day roughly a week after the July 5 shooting; Sanchez later admitted to the roommate that he had taken and returned the rifle.9Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Preliminary Hearing Ballistics testing matched the shell casings from the overpass to that rifle, and the cleaning rod found at the scene matched a rod missing from the roommate’s cleaning set.1Oxygen. Megan Barroso Killed by Vincent Sanchez
A green jacket matching the one Barroso had worn that night, with a bullet hole through it, was found in a trash bin outside Sanchez’s residence. Blood evidence turned up in his truck. A friend, George Fernandez, told police Sanchez had once shown him the AK-47 and, on a drive through the Simi Valley hills, had remarked that the area “would be a good place to hide a body.”3Los Angeles Times. Preliminary Hearing in Sanchez Case
Investigators pieced together what had happened: Sanchez spotted Barroso driving alone in the early morning hours, chased her in his truck, forced her to stop by firing into her car with the assault rifle, and dragged her into his vehicle.1Oxygen. Megan Barroso Killed by Vincent Sanchez
The Red Glitter
DNA proved largely unusable for reconstructing the sequence prosecutors needed. Red glitter filled that gap. Edwin Jones, a Ventura County Sheriff’s crime lab trace-evidence specialist, recovered 10 hexagonal particles of red glitter from Barroso’s scalp during the autopsy, extracting them under a microscope with forceps. He matched them to glitter found on tape lifts from the front seat and bed of Sanchez’s truck, on the bullet-holed jacket recovered from behind Sanchez’s house, and on the AK-47 itself.10Popular Mechanics. Glitter Murder Evidence1Oxygen. Megan Barroso Killed by Vincent Sanchez
Lindsay Gross gave investigators the container the glitter had come from. Jones traced it to a Hot Topic store and determined that only about 10,000 containers of that specific variety had been manufactured. The match formed what he called a “triangle” of trace evidence connecting victim, suspect, and crime scene.4Popular Mechanics. Glitter Solves Murder California Crime11WBUR. Glitter Forensic Science Jones, who kept one of the world’s largest glitter reference collections, later said: “One of the best things about glitter, from a crime-solving perspective, is that it’s virtually impossible to get rid of.”
The Trial and Death Sentence
The murder trial opened in 2003 in Ventura County Superior Court before Judge Ken Riley. Prosecutors argued that Sanchez had killed Barroso during the commission of kidnapping and rape, which made the case first-degree murder with special circumstances. Several of his prior sexual assault victims testified to establish the pattern. One woman, identified as J.K., described being abducted at gunpoint from her Simi Valley home in May 1999, driven to a dirt field, photographed, and assaulted. Another said she had been tackled in her home, bound with duct tape, and beaten with a beer bottle before fighting back and unmasking her attacker, who fled after telling her, “You win.”12Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Trial Victim Testimony
Defense attorneys argued that the shooting was an impulsive act, that Barroso had died immediately from the gunshot, and that no rape occurred. The glitter match, the ballistics, the bloodstained jacket, and the bullet trajectories supported the prosecution’s account. On August 5, 2003, the jury convicted Sanchez of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and attempted rape.5Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Convicted of First-Degree Murder
During the penalty phase, defense mental health expert Mary Jay Adams testified that Sanchez had told her he enjoyed “showing up” the Simi Valley Police Department by committing sex crimes without getting caught.13Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Penalty Phase On September 5, 2003, the jury returned a death verdict. Judge Riley formally imposed the sentence on November 4, 2003, along with multiple life terms for the sexual assault and kidnapping convictions from Sanchez’s earlier guilty pleas.14Los Angeles Times. Sanchez Sentenced to Death
Where the Case Stands Now
California law sends every death sentence to the state Supreme Court on automatic appeal. As of a 2011 report, Sanchez’s appeal was still in the pre-briefing stage. Appellate counsel had been appointed in July 2008 and had received the 30,586-page trial record the following month, but after 12 extensions no opening brief had been filed.15Ventura County Star. Death Penalty’s Cost to California
No one has been executed in California since 2006, when a court order froze the practice over concerns about the lethal injection protocol. In March 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order granting a reprieve to all 737 inmates then on death row, imposing a moratorium on executions for the duration of his time in office. Sanchez was among the 17 death-row inmates convicted in Ventura County covered by the reprieve.16Ventura County Star. Convicted Death Row Inmates Ventura County He remains in state prison.
The case was later featured in the Oxygen true-crime series Homicide for the Holidays, Season 5, Episode 1, “Red, White and Blood.”17Oxygen. Homicide for the Holidays