Case of homeless woman found beheaded and buried in Huntington Beach handed to jury

Prosecutors, based largely on circumstantial evidence, accused a Huntington Beach man of killing a woman found beheaded and buried in a trailer park over two years ago, while his defense argued she was in poor health and her cause of death was never conclusively determined before the matter was handed to a jury Thursday.

Police unearthed the body of Gina Marie Lokhart on July 17, 2022, in the yard of a double-wide trailer in the Maple Ridge Mobile Home Park. The 60-year-old woman had been homeless in Huntington Beach for about two years and was recognizable to people in the area surrounding Beach Boulevard and Slater Avenue.

“She was living on the street,” Janine Madera, senior prosecutor for the Orange County district attorney’s office, said during her closing argument. “She relied on the kindness of strangers, help from others.”

Surveillance footage recorded a bystander purchasing a bottle of Gatorade for her at a convenience store on the morning of June 29. An employee at a taco truck at Morgan Lane and Slater, Emilia Perez, may have been the last person to see Lockhart alive. Perez said she was walking home from work when she saw Lockhart lying in a fetal position in a nearby lawn, groaning and clutching her belly on the afternoon of either June 29 or June 30.

It’s unclear exactly when she died. None of the over 30 witnesses called to the stand during roughly two weeks of trial were able to account for Lockhart’s whereabouts in the moments leading up to her death.

Meanwhile, residents at the mobile home began noticing a foul odor coming from a shed in their yard a few days before hosting a July 4 gathering. One of them, Lolita Guevara, said she saw her brother, Antonio Padilla, digging a roughly 5-foot-wide hole deep enough to expose the plumbing in their yard on July 10. Later that day Guevera and Padilla’s mother, Rosario Cendejas, confronted her son as he was carrying bags filled with blankets that appeared to be stained with blood and crawling with maggots.

More than two years later, during an interview in October 2024, Guevara told investigators she recalled hearing a woman screaming for help sometime in the last days of June 2022. Her statements and testimony were a key component of prosecutor’s case against her brother.

“She is the one piece of direct evidence of this murder,” Madera said.

Antonio Padilla’s attorney, Daniel Kim of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, noted that Guevara had been interviewed multiple times before ever mentioning any woman screaming. She had also told investigators she was “moving mountains” to make sure her brother stayed behind bars.

“Lolita is lying about the scream,” Kim said.

Padilla’s defense also emphasized that forensic scientists were unable to conclusively determine Lockhart’s cause of death. Experts believe her head was likely removed after she had died. There were no bruises, scratches or other signs of a struggle found on her body.

Kim said there was no scientific evidence confirming she was the victim of a homicide and suggested she may have died of natural causes. He noted Lockhart had been hospitalized multiple times for seizures and alcohol poisoning in the month leading up to her death.

Madera noted that Lockhart’s body may have been decomposing for weeks before she was discovered, making it difficult for investigators to examine. She added that Padilla was much larger and stronger than the victim and could have easily overpowered her.

“She’s 60 years old. She’s 5 foot 4 and 70 pounds ...” Madera told jurors, gesturing as if she were wrapping her arms around a smaller person in front of her. “She didn’t have any struggle marks because it was that easy. She didn’t have a chance.”

A patch of Lockhart’s hair and scalp were found in a shed Padilla used for shelter in the yard she was buried in. Her blood was found on a knife stored inside the structure. The defendant’s DNA was also identified on the tool‘s handle.

Madera said the knife was likely what was used to cut off the victim’s head after she died. That action would have obscured any physical evidence of strangulation.

“You don’t go to those lengths and do that,” Madera said of Lockhart’s beheading. “You just don’t, unless you’re hiding a murder.”

Lockhart’s mother, Donna Ashbaugh, was among a handful of the victim’s loved ones in the courtroom Thursday. She winced, pressed her hands to her face and looked away as photos of her daughter were presented to the jury as evidence.

The jurors will start their deliberations on Tuesday.