A California man is suspected of killing his girlfriend and stuffing her corpse in a trash can behind his home in a posh SoCal neighborhood, authorities said this week.
Local cops arrested Daniel Allen Aldrich, 49, of Costa Mesa, for the suspected murder of 38-year-old Julie Ann Sanetra of Irvine, Costa Mesa police said in a statement Tuesday.
“We were able to … bring him into custody very safely and quickly,” Deputy Chief Joyce LaPointe told KABC-TV.
“It’s always good during these investigations to quickly be able to bring resolution and arrest a suspect, and that’s exactly what our CMPD detectives did.”
Authorities haven’t said how Sanetra died, or what might have sparked the killing.
But they did say the two were “in a relationship,” an updated statement said.
Officers found Sanetra’s body Tuesday afternoon after a 911 call came in at about 2:30 p.m. saying someone had found a dead woman behind a home on the 1900 block of Maple Avenue, police said.
Their investigation — which began shortly after they found Sanetra — led them to Aldrich, who was at a family member’s house in Glendale when they arrested him, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The killing rattled the ritzy community just south of Los Angeles, where homes regularly go for well over a million dollars.
“It’s quiet [here],” resident Metinee Farley told OnScene TV. “Everybody is nice, and this is a big deal. This is very scary.”
Another neighbor told the outlet that there were no disturbances at the house, which the suspect had recently bought — and never “any type of violence or anything like that.”
Other neighbors told news outlets they rarely saw anyone at the home.
“I pass by here two, three times every single day for seven days a week, and I’ve never seen anybody there,” neighbor Barbara Bruce said, according to People.
“It was for sale, and I know it was sold, but I didn’t see anybody move in.”
“It’s a nice residential area,” LaPointe, the deputy chief, added. “This is something that we don’t see very often here.”