By Redaccion
redaccion@latinocc.com
District Attorney Erik Nasarenko announced that Antoine Nehme (born July 22, 1951), a resident of Victorville, has been found guilty by a jury of orchestrating the 2004 murder of Dennis Wood, a Moorpark resident found dead in his home.
The jury also determined that Nehme ordered the crime for financial gain. Additionally, Judge Paul Baelly ruled that all aggravating factors in the case were true, including the use of extreme violence and that the crime was carefully planned and executed with sophistication and professionalism.
A Cold Case for Years
On April 16, 2004, officers from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office conducted a welfare check at Wood’s Moorpark home. Upon entering, they found his body lying in the doorway, with a pool of blood near his head. An autopsy revealed he had been shot twice in the head and once in the chest.
The case remained unsolved for several years until investigators uncovered a financial motive. Wood, who owned a prepaid phone card business, had given $28,700 in cash to Nehme for an unknown investment. At the time, Nehme owned a gas station in Ojai, where he purchased prepaid phone cards from Wood. Instead of repaying his debt, Nehme arranged for Wood’s murder to erase what he owed.
A Key Confession and Testimony from the Killer
The case took a major turn in February 2010, when a suspect in an unrelated Los Angeles murder told investigators that his co-defendant, Alex Bracamonte, had killed Wood on Nehme’s orders. Bracamonte, who worked at Nehme’s gas station in Ojai, confessed to the murder on August 23, 2023, during an interview with sheriff’s deputies, providing details that only the killer could know.
Bracamonte, already serving a sentence for a 2006 Los Angeles murder, was formally charged with Wood’s killing and pleaded guilty on May 8, 2024. He testified against Nehme during the trial and is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30, 2025.
Senior Deputy District Attorney John Barrick, a member of the Ventura County Major Crimes Homicide Unit, led the prosecution against Nehme and praised the investigators’ work.
“I am deeply grateful to the jury for convicting the defendant and to the Ventura County Sheriff’s detectives who never gave up on this case,” Barrick said. “Thanks to their tireless efforts—especially lead detectives Gerardo Cruz and Erik Hernandez—we gathered the evidence needed to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt. After two decades, they achieved justice for Dennis Wood’s family.”
Nehme is set to be sentenced on May 20, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. in Courtroom 26 of the Ventura County Superior Court. He remains in custody without bail and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
