A San Diego man is accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend for more than a year after a judge rejected her request for a restraining order ― and then killing his ex’s fiancé.
Prosecutors say Jesse Milton Alvarez was spurred by jealousy when he carefully planned the fatal shooting of Mario Fierro, a beloved teacher.
When Fierro proposed to Amy Gembara, a fellow teacher at Cathedral Catholic High School, in December 2020, he couldn’t know that her “jealous, obsessive and possessive ex-boyfriend would methodically plot his execution,” prosecutors recently said in opening statements for Alvarez’s murder trial.
Fierro did know that Alvarez, now 33, had allegedly been stalking Gembara since their breakup in September 2019, after three years of dating. School security officials had escorted Alvarez off campus several times, but he and Fierro had never met face to face — until the morning of Feb. 1, 2021, when Alvarez shot him six times in front of his home as Fierro, 37, was preparing to leave for work.
Alvarez was arrested at his home that evening, and later pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, which includes a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait. Prosecutors declined to pursue the death penalty.
Chilling audio of the shooting, recorded by neighbors’ security cameras, was played in court on Feb. 26, the first day of Alvarez’s trial. The first shot was followed by a scream, then silence as five more shots rang out on the North Park residential street.
Alvarez targeted Fierro after he saw a picture of him and Gembara in a social media post by the high school on Dec. 21, 2020, congratulating the couple on their engagement, prosecutors said.
Fierro taught social studies, coached the cross-country team and was the football team’s assistant coach.
Six weeks after the engagement post, Alvarez drove his brother’s car to Fierro’s apartment and waited for an hour, confronting him just after 7 a.m. Prosecutors called the shooting an ambush, but Alvarez’s defense attorney said he acted in self-defense — that Fierro had assaulted him when all he wanted to do was talk.
Digital footprint
But Alvarez’s Google searches and browser history tell a different, darker story.
Among his Google searches in the days after the engagement post, prosecutors said, were “hire hitman san diego ca,” “how to shoot someone in self defense,” “how to shoot someone without leaving forensic evidence,” “does a phone on airplane mode track GPS location,” and “do the police use cellphone GPS data when tracking criminal activity.”
One search in particular stood out to investigators: “how to kill your ex’s fiancee [sic].”
Alvarez visited websites with names including “How to Commit the Perfect Murder,” “16 Steps to Kill Someone and Not Get Caught” and “Leaving an Invisible Trail: How Killers Cover Up Their Crimes,” prosecutors said.
Firearms
Alvarez also bought two guns and signed up for firearms training classes.
His defense attorney, Kerry Armstrong, said Alvarez purchased the guns for his own safety because of the country’s political unrest in 2020, with “a lot of riots going on,” KGTV reported.
One of his instructors at the gun range was troubled by several of Alvarez’s questions, according to a detective who testified at a February 2022 hearing in the case.
“Where’s the best place to shoot someone to kill them? What about the back of the head?” Alvarez asked, according to the instructor.
Alleged stalking
Gembara had ended her relationship with Alvarez because of his increasing “pattern of control, manipulation, and emotional abuse,” she said in a request for a restraining order in December 2019.
In the months after their breakup, Gembara said, Alvarez’s harassment had “escalated,” and he repeatedly tried to contact her from unknown numbers, cyberstalked her and even followed her and her sister to the Disney California Adventure theme park in Anaheim, begging her to speak with him.
She changed her door lock and installed a security camera, she said in the affidavit. She said the camera captured video of Alvarez trying to get into her apartment. She finally moved to another home because she was fearful of what he might do.
“I’m extremely afraid he will harm me,” she wrote.
Alvarez filed a 13-page response to her restraining order request, saying that Gembara had mischaracterized or lied about his behavior and promising to leave her alone.
Saying he found Alvarez to be “very sincere” and believed he’d simply needed “time to process and realize that the relationship was over,” a judge denied Gembara’s request for a permanent protective order in a Jan. 22, 2020, hearing, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
But Alvarez’s harassment continued, prosecutors said.
Alvarez showed up at the high school campus where Gembara and Fierro worked at least twice, and was escorted away by security staff, who were informed about Gembara’s restraining order request, a school spokesperson told NBC 7.
Three days after Cathedral Catholic High School’s social media post about their teachers’ engagement, Alvarez applied for an ASL teaching position at the school.
He also got a job working for a vendor providing food services on the campus, Gembara testified, but the school spokesperson told NBC 7 that Alvarez was recognized almost immediately and forced to leave.
Alvarez’s self-defense
Armstrong, the defense attorney, said in his opening statements that a clinical and forensic psychologist diagnosed Alvarez after the shooting as having autism spectrum disorder. The psychologist described Alvarez as “very autistic” and “high functioning,” in Armstrong’s words.
“He doesn’t take social cues very well [and] just didn’t understand he was supposed to stay away from her,” Armstrong said, according to SDNews.com.
“I think autism played a large degree in this,” Armstrong said, according to the Union-Tribune. “He believed it was his role to protect [Gembara].”
However, Steve Silberman, author of “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity,” told HuffPost that autism has become a “trendy method of defense for defense attorneys,” perpetuating false stereotypes about autistic people.
“We are discovering that, in fact, autistic people commit crimes less, and less violent crimes, than non-autistic people,” Silberman said, pointing to a 2022 meta-study in the journal Autism.
Unfortunately, Silberman said, “every time someone suggests in a case that a defendant’s autism made them morally unaccountable or something, it intensifies that myth.”
Ahead of the defense presenting its case, Armstrong reiterated to HuffPost his contention that Alvarez acted in self-defense.
“It is our hope that the jury comes to the conclusion that Jesse used reasonable self-defense, or at the very least imperfect self-defense,” Armstrong said.
Denied protection
After the shooting, Gembara begged the court to deny bond to Alvarez in a statement read by prosecutors at his arraignment in February 2021.
“I sought to protect myself in January 2020 and my cries for help were wrongfully denied,” she wrote, according to the Union-Tribune. “I stand before you grief-stricken and heartbroken over the murder of my fiancé Mario Fierro, who was the true love of my life. I stand before you hoping this time to be taken seriously.”
“Mario was a passionate, caring, charismatic, truly original teacher, coach, and person,” a friend of Fierro’s wrote on Facebook the day of his death. “Today, my heart is with his beloved Amy, the love of his life and a fellow CCHS teacher. Watching their love story told before our very eyes was a source of light in a dark year.”
Alvarez’s bond was denied, and he has been held at a San Diego jail since his arrest. If convicted, he faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-866-331-9474 or text “loveis” to 22522 for the National Dating Abuse Helpline.