A senior deputy district attorney and two Ventura County Sheriff's Office cold case detectives stood before hundreds of homicide investigators from across California this month to walk through one of the county's most convoluted murder-for-hire cases: the 2004 killing of Dennis Wood, a Moorpark phone card distributor who was gunned down after loaning nearly $29,000 to a man who never intended to pay him back.
Senior Deputy District Attorney John Barrick presented the case alongside Ventura County Sheriff's Office detectives Gerardo Cruz and Erik Hernandez at the 2026 California Homicide Investigators' Association annual conference in Las Vegas, according to a Ventura County District Attorney's Office post on Facebook. The presentation, titled A Scam, A Prince, and a Murder: The Cold Case Assassination of Dennis Wood, laid out how a two-decade-old investigation into Wood's death was ultimately solved and how two killers were brought to justice.
The Doorway Discovery in Moorpark
Ventura County Sheriff's deputies found 71-year-old Dennis Leroy Wood dead in the doorway of his home in the 12500 block of Mountain Trail Street in Moorpark on April 16, 2004. He had suffered two gunshot wounds to the head and one to the chest, and coroner estimates indicated he had been dead for roughly two weeks before anyone discovered his body, according to the Los Angeles Times. Wood was a Syracuse University graduate and biblical scholar who ran a prepaid phone card business, a detail that later became central to the financial dispute that led to his death, per Primetimer.
Wood had lent $28,700 in cash to Antoine Nehme, owner of an Ojai gas station where Nehme had originally purchased phone cards from Wood, for a promised high-return business venture. The Facebook post from the district attorney's office puts the figure at $28.5,000, with Nehme promising to return Wood's investment fourfold. When that venture failed and Wood threatened to go to police to demand his money back, Nehme solicited an employee to assassinate him rather than repay the debt, Primetimer reports.
Evidence of an Elaborate Con
The conference presentation showcased the layers of deception investigators say Nehme used to convince Wood the investment was real, including a Capital Gold Group document, an American Gas folder, a letter purportedly from a “Prince Faisal,” and Wood's own phone records, per the district attorney's office's Facebook post. Those materials, combined with a reference to the unrelated Jesse Torres murder, formed what the office described as evidence of a con at the heart of the motive.
During the cold case review, detectives also examined Wood's handwritten financial ledgers, which contained cryptic notations such as “no wreck,” meaning a payment had not been received. Witness Don Houser helped investigators decipher the notations, which showed specific cash amounts including $11,000 and $12,000 and helped prove the unpaid financial obligation between Wood and Nehme, according to footage referenced by Discovery UK.
A Hitman's Confession Breaks the Case Open
The hitman Nehme allegedly hired was Alex Vincent Bracamonte, a former employee at Nehme's Ojai gas station who was already serving a 26-year-to-life sentence for a 2006 Los Angeles murder. A February 2010 tip from an inmate in an unrelated Los Angeles homicide case had implicated Bracamonte, but the lead went unpursued for years until Ventura County Sheriff's Cold Case Unit detectives — Cruz and Hernandez among them — reopened the investigation in August 2023, according to the Moorpark Acorn.
Bracamonte confessed to Wood's killing in August 2023, providing details during interrogation that only the gunman would know, and pleaded guilty in May 2024. He later testified against Nehme and was sentenced to 15 years to life in May 2025, the Moorpark Acorn's reporting shows. Bracamonte's history included a prior first-degree murder conviction for the stabbing death of Jose Jesus “Jesse” Torres, a case tried alongside co-defendant Raul Garcia Vasquez and affirmed by the California Court of Appeal in September 2011.
Nehme's Arrest and Conviction
Ventura County Sheriff's Cold Case Unit detectives arrested 72-year-old Antoine Nehme on May 14, 2024, at his home in Victorville, where he had relocated after closing his Ojai gas station following the killing. He was initially held on $2 million bail at the Ventura County Jail, per edhat.
A Ventura County jury convicted the by-then 73-year-old Nehme in March 2025 of murder, conspiracy, and solicitation of murder. In May 2025, Superior Court Judge Paul Baelly sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, affirming special allegations that the murder was committed for financial gain, involved great violence, targeted a vulnerable victim, abused a position of trust, and exhibited planning and professionalism. Hoodline previously reported on Nehme's jury conviction and his subsequent life sentence.
National Spotlight and a Conference Debrief
The case drew national attention in December 2025, when Investigation Discovery's true-crime series Who Hired the Hitman? featured it in an episode titled The Genius and the Mastermind, detailing the 20-year span from the initial crime to the eventual convictions, per Primetimer's earlier report. Barrick, Cruz, and Hernandez used the case as a teaching example for other California investigators, sharing how a 20-year-old murder investigation was ultimately solved despite the initial 2010 tip sitting unpursued for years.
Officials framed the case as a study in contrasts: a quiet residential street in Moorpark set against an elaborate, multi-jurisdictional financial fraud scheme involving a fabricated prince, phony investment paperwork, and a debt that ended in murder. The Ventura County District Attorney's Office's Facebook post noted that two killers were ultimately brought to justice for Dennis Wood's death, closing out a case that took two decades to solve.
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