Murder Trial To Begin For Gardner

By Greta Mart
Staff Reporter
Saturday March 17, 2012

Crime

Photo contributed

The murder trial of Robert Gardner, one of three men accused of killing Martinez teen Eric Bean, begins at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, 27 months after police found Bean's tortured and slain body dumped down a McEwen Road embankment.

A subsequent autopsy revealed Bean died from asphyxiation from strangulation and blunt force head trauma.

A jury has been assembled to decide the fate of Gardner, who faces charges of murder, torture, kidnapping, conspiracy and being an accessory to the murder, which police say occurred on Dec. 20, 2009.

Gardner, 34, and his wife Melody Rives, 32, along with a father and son named Timothy Danny Delosreyes Jr., 38, and Timothy Danny Delosreyes III, 20, were arrested three months after the murder. During court proceedings the younger Delosreyes was identified as "Little Tim," as opposed to his co-defendant and father, "Big Tim."

Rives was released from custody in May of 2010 after she made a plea bargain with the District Attorney's office and described in detail during a preliminary hearing how the men had killed Bean and the events leading up to the murder.

Although police said the murder was committed in Benicia, the killers dumped Bean's body in unincorporated Contra Costa County and the County's Sheriff's Office was the lead investigative agency, hence the case is being tried in Martinez where Gardner and the Delosreyes have been incarcerated.

In mid-2011, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Jill Fannin ruled there was sufficient evidence against the three accused men to warrant a jury trial and issued a holding order for the defendants, despite protests from public defenders that the prosecution's key deponent, defendant-turned-witness-for-the-prosecution, Rives, was "ridiculously unreliable" and obviously trying to minimize her involvement in the murder, as well as the role of her husband, defendant Gardner, and pin all blame on the youngest accused.

Since Fannin's ruling, attorneys for Delosreyes III and Gardner have attempted to have their clients deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. Another judge denied Gardner's claim and ordered the defendant to stand trial.

Soon after Bean's body was discovered – only clad in a pair of boxer shorts with limbs bound – the county coroner said the major contusions he found inside Bean's rib cage was consistent with foot stomping, and the large amount of blood found in Bean's stomach was caused by the dagger Little Timmy had repeatedly thrust down and through his throat, testified Garrett Schiro, the Sheriff's Office homicide detective in charge of the case, at a preliminary hearing. Schiro said he believed Gardner had instigated and accompanied Delosreyes III and Bean on a mission to steal guns from Bean's father's house in Martinez. The detective also testified that Gardner had said Little Timmy had emerged from the murder scene bedroom saying, "I did it. I did it. I did it for us."

According to Rives, the murder was committed exclusively at his father's Carolina Drive home by Timothy Danny Delosreyes III, who was the same age as Bean; the two had grown up together and played on the same Little League team as children.

Jimmy Bean Jr., Eric's father, an active member of Army Reserves and an employee of Jeffco Painting and Coating in Vallejo – where Eric also held a job – described his son as an avid fisherman and baseball player and someone who would go out of his way to help people.

"He played baseball since the age of four," said Jimmy Bean Jr. "He fished daily, right off the [Martinez] pier. When [downtown] flooded a few years back, Eric was right there shoveling mud. He would take in stray cats, dogs and he had never been in trouble until recently."

A week and a half after his death, roughly 150 mourners gathered in Rankin Park to hold a candlelight memorial for the reportedly popular 18-year-old.

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