Suspect had a violent past
By ANITA HASSAN, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Updated 12:22 a.m., Saturday, September 24, 2011
For more than 30 years, Manuel Richard Pena has been accused of acts of violence against one family member or another.
In 1976, he allegedly shot one of his now ex-wives in the genitals during an argument.
In 1989, Pena, who has been married seven times, was accused of punching his 72-year-old stepfather before he dragged him down a driveway after the elderly man verbally corrected one of Pena's children.
And in 2004, he beat his 7-year-old grandson so severely he gave the child a bloody nose after the boy wouldn't get out of bed for school.
Although police were called and charges were filed in these incidents, Pena, 69, almost always managed to walk away without a conviction or severe punishment.
On Friday, the law caught up with Pena again.
Harris County Sheriff's Office investigators announced they charged Pena with murder in the 1982 death of his 19-year-old girlfriend, Sherri Strong.
That slaying occurred June 16 that year. Sheriff's deputies arrived to Pena's home in the 10700 block of Hazy Valley around 3 a.m. to find Strong lying facedown, nude and with a rope around her neck in Pena's garage. Detectives later would learn that the young woman was two months pregnant.
Deputies had been called to the residence by Pena, 34 at the time, who told them that he awoke to find Strong in the garage.
"Clearly a staged (suicide) scene," said Harris County sheriff's investigator Sgt. Eric Clegg, who investigated the nearly 30-year-old murder.
Detectives who initially investigated the case appeared to have the same idea and presented it to the Harris County District Attorney's Office as a homicide with Pena as the suspect.
However, prosecutors felt the evidence collected at the time was not strong enough and did not accept the charges, Clegg said.
Abuse accusations
Sgt. Dean Holtke and Clegg, who together make up the sheriff's cold case squad, learned from family members that Pena and Strong had been seeing each other for about eight months but broke up a month prior to the woman's death because of physical abuse in the relationship.
Strong's parents told investigators the woman feared Pena so much she had even started carrying a gun, which was found in her car the day of her death, Clegg said.
Pena, who was married to another woman but separated while seeing Strong, also gave conflicting stories to both initial and recent investigators. He initially said he knew Strong was pregnant only hours before he found her dead, but he since has recanted, Clegg said.
A motive in the killing is still unknown.
Father-in-law shot
It was only about a month after Strong's death that Pena was again questioned by police, but in connection with another case. Pena was accused of firing a shotgun into the home of his then-father-in-law, Abel Deltoro, after he became angry that the man wouldn't allow him to speak with his wife, according to investigators and court records.
Deltoro was struck by one of the bullets and seriously injured.
The case was later dismissed at Deltoro's request in exchange for Pena giving him custody of his grandchildren, Clegg said.
Six years later, Pena was again before police, this time for allegedly assaulting his elderly stepfather, Ralph Sorrentino. And again, the case was dismissed at the victim's request because he feared Pena would deny him access to his grandchildren, Clegg said.
Strong, a pretty, red-haired girl who graduated from Conroe High School, was not the first woman Pena had been violent against. On three occasions between 1974 and 1976, police questioned Pena about reports of abuse from his now ex-wife, Yolanda Pena.
Over the course of those years, he been accused of giving Yolanda Pena two black eyes, beating the woman while she was five months pregnant and shooting her in the genitals with a shotgun. Yolanda Pena survived.
In that incident, Manuel was found not guilty after investigators said he convinced a jury it was an accident.
Grandson's beating
The only case in which Pena had received significant punishment was when he was convicted of beating his 7-year-old grandson in 2004. For that, Pena, who is currently married to his seventh wife and runs a photography studio out of his Houston home, was given six years' probation.
Cold case investigators picked up the case in January.
Clegg said it was Pena's past that hinted there was more to be reviewed in the case. They then spent months, re-examining all the cases and interviewing numerous people who had been involved. Eventually, investigators were able to gather enough witness statements to make a case against Pena.
"When I ran his criminal history and saw the dispositions on those (prior) cases, I felt he had been really lucky," Clegg said.
Pena was arrested at his home Thursday. He is being held in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.
Investigators noted that Pena seemed surprised during the arrest.
"My partner asked him (Pena) did he think we would be back," Clegg said. "He said 'no.' "
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