On May 29, 2012, at the California State Prison in the 44700 block of 60th Street in Northeast Antelope Valley, 36-year-old Francisco Javier Aguilar was found unresponsive in his bunk and was pronounced dead at about 1:18 a.m. Coroner and prison records indicate he was discovered with an electronic cable wrapped around his neck; the cause of death was listed as strangulation.
Aguilar was a Hispanic male who had been incarcerated since 1999 and was serving a life sentence for the sexual assault of a child in San Diego County. Prison officials and news reports say his cellmate, 42-year-old Aaron Alvarez — a lifer serving a first-degree murder conviction out of Kern County — became the chief suspect after investigators observed "something suspicious" on the body. Alvarez was moved to administrative segregation while the death was investigated.
The killing was being handled by California prison investigators with assistance from detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Reporting at the time noted this incident came about six months after another inmate was found dead in his cell at the same facility; that earlier death was still under investigation in December 2011. Officials described the matter as an in-custody death and treated the cellmate as the suspected perpetrator, but public records and contemporaneous reporting do not show a criminal charge or conviction stemming from Aguilar's death.
As of the available records and news coverage, the case remains an in-custody homicide under investigation with no publicly reported arrest or criminal charge for Aguilar's death. Those with information were asked to contact Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide investigators.
