A breakthrough has been made in a 12-year-old murder case from Pennsylvania. The Berks County District Attorney’s Office charged Vallis L. Slaughter, a 39-year-old man from Jersey City, New Jersey, with murder, conspiracy, and assault in the death of Julio A. Torress. The charges come nearly 12 years to the day after Torress was fatally shot at 3:36 a.m. on March 24, 2012, in the parking lot of the West Reading Diner.
Julio A. Torress was killed while sitting inside his vehicle in the diner’s parking lot. A joint investigation by the West Reading Borough Police Department, the Berks County District Attorney’s Detective Unit, and the Major Crime Task Force led to the 2012 arrest of Jomaine Case, then 22, following the incident.
The District Attorney’s office stated the investigation revealed a verbal dispute between Case, an unidentified shooter, and Torress in the diner’s parking lot shortly before the shooting. Although Case was convicted of aggravated and simple assault in 2013, he was acquitted of murder and other charges.
Evidence indicates that Torress was unfamiliar with his attackers. Surveillance footage from the diner showed Case and the shooter with Styrofoam cups just before the incident. A bitten-off piece of one such cup, found at the scene and analyzed by the Pennsylvania State Police Forensic Crime Laboratory, yielded an unknown man’s DNA profile, leading to the recent breakthrough in the case.