The Murder of Evelyn & Alex Hernandez in San Francisco

by Jessica

A "perfect victim" is someone who is the victim of a crime who doesn't have something "wrong" with them. A victim, the news, the police and communities don't view as being responsible for their crimes. These victims are often called "innocent" and society easily identifies with them.

One of the consequences of not being a "perfect victim" is less attention is paid to your case by the media and by communities and when you do get attention a lot of effort is put into finding ways the victim could have done better. Perhaps if they hadn't hitchhiked, or dressed a certain way they may not have become prey to a person who holds less responsibility for their murder. We've all heard phrases like, "they asked for it" far too many times.

In each of our upcoming episodes the idea of "perfect" and "imperfect" victims will come into play. It plays a big part in our bonus episode this week. In it we cover the murders of Evelyn and Alex Hernandez. This is a case that received little attention and is when does receive attention its usually connected with a more famous case. When we put together the episode we considered trying to rectify that issue by only giving details in the Hernandez case but the more we researched and saw first hand how little information was given in the case, and how much of it was reported as part of another case, we decided we'd tackle the subject head on.

You can find our episode on this case anywhere you listen to podcasts, on our home page and on Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/28000626

Evelyn & Alex Hernandez

Evelyn Hernandez was years old and pregnant with her second child in April of 2002 when her and her five year old son, Alex, were last seen. In the days leading up to her disappearance, Evelyn spent time preparing for her baby's arrival on what doctors believed would be May 7th. She attended a doctors appointment, helped get her son set up with a new bed and talked with her sister about an upcoming baby shower. During that call her sister talked to her about how she would get to a baby shower in Richmond, CA from her San Francisco Amazon-Crocker neighborhood. Evelyn didn't have a car and had been experiencing pain with her pregnancy. She was on disability from her job at the The Clift Royal Sonesta Hotel on Geary Street in downtown San Francisco.

May 1, 2002 was the last time anyone saw or heard from Evelyn and her son Alex. The next day Alex was absent from school and people who tried to get in touch with Evelyn couldn't find her. On May 7, 2002, the two were reported missing by Herman Aguilar and Evelyn's sister. Aguilar was the father of Evelyn's child due on May 7th.

When police go to Evelyn's home they believe it may be possible she's left town to have her baby elsewhere. Family and friends believed this wasn't possible. Evelyn was a legal immigrant from El Salvador and just a week out from giving birth. Traveling would be difficult and her passports were still in her house. Police could not find her wallet.

Sometime after Evelyn went missing a person in South San Francisco found her wallet in a ditch near Colma Creek. The person who finds the wallet has no reason to think they've found anything other than a missing wallet and hoping to get it back to it's owner they try to get in touch with Evelyn. On May 30, 2002, they take the wallet to the police station hoping they might have more luck getting in  touch with Evelyn. To police this is important and telling evidence that something more has happened to Evelyn.

Inside the wallet the police find cash and Evelyn's disability check. They go to the area where the wallet was found and search thoroughly, even using dogs, hoping to find any other evidence. They don't find anything else. Police move Evelyn's case from missing persons to homicide and a press conference is held in the case.

Then on July 24, 2002, someone walking on the Embarcadero, near the Bay Bridge, in San Francisco sees a body in the ocean about 16 feet away from the sea wall. Police pull the body from the bay and find that it is only the lower half of a torso and legs. Maternity clothes is attached or nearby the body. The police check the DNA of the body with DNA from Evelyn's toothbrush. It was a match. Evelyn's unborn child and Alex are nowhere to be found. Police believe that both have also been murdered by the same person who murdered Evelyn.

Information in this case goes cold pretty fast and it's only later in 2002, when Laci Peterson goes missing in Modesto, CA and is found murdered in the San Francisco Bay that attention is paid by the press to Evelyn's case. During the Scott Peterson trial part of his defense was that his wife was killed by another person, the same person who killed Evelyn Hernandez.

While there are some similarities in the two cases, both women were pregnant and found in the bay, the police do not believe there is any evidence to connect the two cases. Scott Peterson was found guilty of murdering his wife Laci Peterson in a very high profile case.

While the two murders are not connected, there is one major difference. The news coverage of first the missing, and then murdered Laci Peterson was heavily covered around the world while the coverage for Evelyn was considerably less. In the local paper, the Hernandez case only garnered a handful of articles and none of them on the front page.

In the episode we talk at length about the reasons why some cases get more attention while others get very little, and sometimes none at all. In fact, most cases never receive the kind of attention famous cases we can all think of do. There doesn't seem to be one reason why a case would garner more attention than another but in Evelyn's case there were several factors that came into play. She was not, as the media would say, a "perfect victim," But no one really is.

Evelyn was a single mother who the papers repeatedly reminded the reader had become pregnant by a man who was married. The fact that she didn't know he was married when she dated him or became pregnant was mentioned once. Most of Evelyn's family lived overseas in El Salvador and though her sisters and friends advocate for her, including holding memorials and keeping hope that Alex is still alive, this hasn't seemed to bring a lot of attention. She wasn't rich, she didn't have a victim's organization advocating on her behalf, and information in the case did not continue to flow as it had in other cases.

But like every victim of murder, Evelyn mattered as much as anyone. Her and her child had a life ahead of them. She was only days away from having her second child who she planned to name Fernando. Lack of attention from the public did not mean that police weren't working hard to find the answers in this case. It also did not meant that the people who loved her didn't grieve and miss the family terribly. Everything that people in larger cases went through this family suffered. And while press may be a blessing for people looking for answers we've seen plenty of cases where it was a double edged sword when it wouldn't die down after answers were had, or when it assumed things about victims instead of treating them as the real people they were.

In this case the police are still investigating. What they need is someone who knows something or saw something to come forward. Over time someone might feel less scared about coming forward, or start to feel guilty about their role in the crime. Keeping Evelyn and Alex in the news means reminding people everyday that they were real, they deserved better and that three lives were taken.

If you have any information in this case please call police in San Francisco at 415-553-1071. If you wish to stay anonymous please call 415-575-4444.

You can find more information and a full list of our works cited for this episode here: https://sites.google.com/view/californiatruecrime/episodes-page/season-2/evelyn-alex-hernandez?authuser=0