When a security guard found the nearly naked body of 41-year-old Elisa Marie Lopez on fire, dumped next to a trash bin in Temecula on a summer night in 2007, he assumed it was a mannequin.
"She had been burnt beyond recognition," prosecutor Brandon Smith told jurors Tuesday in a French Valley courtroom during his opening statement in the murder trial of Lopez's boyfriend.
Melvin Louis Shaw, 45, has pleaded not guilty.
As Smith spoke, he showed jurors a photo of Lopez's charred corpse lying against the bin.
Coroner's officials were unable to pinpoint how Lopez died, but there were bruises and scratches over unburned portions of her body.
Prosecutors say Shaw killed his girlfriend of a few months on July 20, 2007, after they argued when he came home late on their date night, having spent hours drinking with friends. He dragged her body by her feet through her Murrieta house, put her in the trunk of her SUV, dumped her behind a gym off Winchester Road and after dousing her with gasoline, set her on fire, Smith said.
Defense attorney Erin Kirkpatrick did not give an opening statement Tuesday and declined to comment outside court afterward.
Tearful friends and family of Lopez filled a row in the courtroom Tuesday.
"She was my best friend," said Julie Carmean, of Temecula, adding Lopez's death left a "huge void."
Carmean said Lopez was like a mother to her children in the 13 years they knew each other.
"She was 'Elisa Girl' with an attitude," Carmean said, describing Lopez as a fun-loving "smart aleck" and recalling their gatherings of girlfriends for "wine time."
Carmean said she doesn't know what drew Lopez to Shaw, whom Carmean first met a few weeks before her friend's death.
"He wasn't Elisa's type," she said.
Lopez had recently split with a longtime boyfriend and hoped to have children, she said.
Carmean's 26-year-old daughter, Bobbi Garrison, who worked with Lopez in the radiology department at Menifee Valley Medical Center, took the witness stand Tuesday.
Garrison said when Lopez failed to show up for work, she called Shaw. He asked if Lopez had been cheating on him and said he didn't know where she was.
"He said that they had gotten in a fight the night before," she testified.
When investigators combed Lopez's house, they found signs of a struggle and of a sloppy cleanup effort. Traces of blood from "high-impact" blows were spattered around the bathroom and remnants of a blood trail led into the garage. Also, Shaw was bruised and scratched.
Shaw told investigators he awoke after arguing with Lopez and discovered her lifeless body, Smith said. In another interview, Shaw said he feared being blamed for her death and said he set Lopez's body on fire because she wanted to be cremated, Smith told the jury.
Investigators learned Lopez had traded cellphone text messages with her ex-boyfriend the day she died.
"Do you still miss me?" her last text read.
"That cellphone was never found," Smith said. "And she was never heard from again."
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