Murder Charge Dismissed In Corona Killing, RivCo DA Announces

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — After spending seven years in prison for the killing of her boyfriend in Corona, a woman will move on with her life after a murder charge against her was dismissed.

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin announced Thursday his office was dismissing a murder charge against Kimberly Long, now 45, after determining the case against her can no longer be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at a retrial.

Long's case stretches back nearly two decades. She was charged in November 2003 with the murder a month earlier of her then-boyfriend Oswaldo “Ozzy” Conde, 31. According to the DA's office, on Oct. 6, 2003, Long called 911 and told police something happened to Conde inside her home on Springbrook Street in Corona.

Corona police responded and found Conde dead inside the residence, and a subsequent coroner’s autopsy report determined his cause of death to be blunt force trauma.

According to a statement from the California Innocence Project, Long arrived home early on the morning of Oct. 6 and found Conde bludgeoned to death in the couple’s living room. "Blood was everywhere," according to the statement.

Attorneys with the California Innocence Project have represented Long.

According to her defense, Long last saw Conde around 11 p.m. the night before when they had gotten into an argument. She stormed off and left with her friend Jeff Dills. Because she admitted that she and Conde had argued, law enforcement polygraphed her and she passed the test.

Police also polygraphed Conde's ex-girlfriend, but the test came back inconclusive, according to her defense.

Dills told law enforcement that he dropped Long off at 1:20 a.m. on Oct. 6, which was 49 minutes before the 911 call came in — a time gap that proved problematic even though Long insisted her friend's recollection was not correct, her team argued.

Dill was a suspect in the case and offered to help law enforcement in the investigation, but he died before he could be thoroughly questioned about his statement, according to the defense.

In early 2005, a trial for Long was held and resulted in a hung jury, leading the judge to declare a mistrial.

Later that same year, the DA’s office retried the case and on Dec. 27, 2005, a second jury convicted Long of second-degree murder. She was sentenced by Judge Patrick Magers in February 2006 to 15 years to life in prison.

Eleven years later in 2016, Long appeared before Judge Magers again to present evidence that ultimately swayed him to reverse her conviction — a forensic pathology report showing Conde's time of death and a possible third-party motive by his ex-girlfriend. In his decision, the judge found Long was deprived of effective assistance of counsel, which set the case for a retrial.

The DA's office appealed the judge's decision and, in May 2018, the California Court of Appeal reversed Mager’s ruling, thereby affirming the conviction and sentence.

The case eventually made its way to the California Supreme Court. Long was out of custody on bail awaiting a high court decision.

On November 30, 2020, the California Supreme Court — in a unanimous decision — tossed out Long’s murder conviction, which allowed the case to proceed to retrial.

According to Hestrin's announcement Thursday, his office "carefully looked at and considered all aspects of the case and determined, in part due to the lengthy passage of time since the murder and the deaths of key witnesses, that we can no longer prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. Therefore, our office will not retry the case and dismissed the murder charge against Kimberly Long at a trial readiness conference today, April 22, 2021, at the Hall of Justice in Riverside.

"It is the ethical duty and responsibility of the DA’s office to only file and try cases which we believe we can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt," Hestrin's announcement continued.

The decision not to pursue a retrial was made only after his office conducted "a fresh and thorough review" of the case, he said.