There’s been a conviction in a more than two-decade-old murder case in Ventura County, one which was considered a cold case for years.
In April of 2004, Ventura County Sheriff’s deputies conducting a welfare check found the body of Dennis Wood in his Moorpark home. He'd been shot three times.
Detectives were unable to determine a motive for the murder and the case went cold.
But there was a break in 2010. A suspect in an unrelated Los Angeles murder case revealed that a man named Alex Bracamante had killed Wood. Bracamente pled guilty to the murder in 2024.
He told investigators that a man named Antoine Nehme had ordered the killing.
Detectives say the victim owned a prepaid phone card business. They say Nehme, who owned an Ojai gas station at the time, owed Wood nearly $30,000, and rather than pay him back, he had the business owner killed. Prosecutors say Bracamente worked for Nehme at the gas station and carried out the killing.
Nehme was convicted of first-degree murder, with the enhancement that the killing was for financial gain. He'll be sentenced in May and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
