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Published on 07/17/1995 All articles from this issue

Investigators report dead-ends in cases of two Los Altos women; new leads open in slaying of controversial developer

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

Blair Miller-Carlotto, 30, spent part of Thursday at the home of her friend, Cheri Blue, riding one of Blue's horses.

The Los Altos resident had left her husband, Robert Carlotto, 39, a maintenance worker at Stevens Creek Quarry, three months earlier and was in the midst of a bitter separation from him. They were meeting the next night to discuss divorce details.

"She was torn," Blue said, "because of the meeting with Rob. He wanted her to wear her blue dress. She said, 'this wasn't a date,' and seemed annoyed."

On Friday, Dec. 7, 1990, Miller-Carlotto met with Carlotto, and he said he dropped her off at home at 8:15 p.m.

She was never seen again.

Miller-Carlotto is one of three Los Altos residents who has disappeared or been murdered since 1990 for which police have no answers.

Dawn Elaine Sanchez, 32, disappeared from the Four Seasons Motor Inn in Los Altos, where she lived, sometime in the fall of 1991. She has never been seen again.

David Bellucci Sr., 69, longtime Los Altos Hills resident, was found bludgeoned to death June 12, 1993, in his home in Santa Cruz where he had recently moved. Police have no suspects.

Families agonize over the lack of answers.

"Yes, life goes on," said Diana Miller, mother of Miller-Carlotto, Los Altos resident and Los Altos Hills City Council member from 1972-1976. "It's getting close to five years, but there isn't a day we don't miss Blair desperately. We won't be happy until we know the full story."

The Los Altos Police arrested Robert Carlotto on charges of murder Jan. 11, 1991. During the trial witnesses testified that Carlotto had a violent temper, stalked his wife, threatened and abused her. Police found blood specks in Carlotto's kitchen that DNA showed matched a blood sample from a stain on Miller-Carlotto's mattress pad.

But her body has never been found, said Los altos Police Capt. Cliff Balch. "The Carlotto case is closed as far as we're concerned," he said.

Carlotto's defense attorney, Tom Nolan, maintained during the trial that, "This is nothing more than a divorce situation and a person who disappeared."

For Randy Hey, the prosecuting district attorney, there's no question that Miller-Carlotto is dead.

"She's not the type of woman to pack up and leave her child, her sisters, her horses," he said.

Carlotto was acquitted Oct. 31, 1991.

Losing the case, for Hey, was a "huge hit."

A few weeks before Carlotto's acquittal, Los Altos resident Dawn Sanchez disappeared. Los Altos Police moved cautiously because, again, there was no body.

Sanchez, formerly a prostitute at the Mustang Ranch in Nevada, reportedly left the Four Seasons Motor Inn on El Camino Real in Los Altos with her friends Bernardo Bass, 30, of Santa Clara and William Alcorn, another resident of the motel, to buy drugs.

According to police reports, Alcorn got out of the car, and Bass and Sanchez drove off. Alcorn said he heard Bass and Sanchez arguing and that then he heard gunshots.

Police arrested Bass on charges of murder, but then released him after Alcorn disappeared and Bass' car could not be found.

"We feel Sanchez was kidnapped and taken out of Los Altos and killed somewhere else," Balch said. "The Sanchez case is still open, but we've followed all the leads."

In the case of David Bellucci, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office is still actively working on the investigation, said Sgt. Richard Ross, public information officer.

New information has come in, and investigators followed up with interviews July 6, Ross said. Investigators declined to give details.

Bellucci bought the historic Adobe Creek Lodge, on Moody Road in Los Atos Hills, in 1960 and turned the lodge into a private country club.

Rosemary Meyerott, Los Altos Hills town historian, said Bellucci spent years battling the zoning board over plans to develop the land.

"Nobody liked him in the town, poor Dave," Meyerott said. "He was always doing things to make the council mad at him. He was out to break our zoning."

Bellucci began to subdivide his Adobe Creek land into 11 lots for luxury homes in 1988. Sometime during this process, he moved to Santa Cruz and in 1992 opened a card room there called Bellucci's House of Poker.

"Dave could piss us all off," said Henry Wall, a patron of the card room. "He was a very strong person. People loved having him in a game. He had no fear, and he lost millions playing poker."

In 1993, three months before he was murdered, Bellucci refinanced the seven lots he still owned in Los Altos Hills.

A year later, these lots were auctioned off in a foreclosure sale.

Today, five lots are owned by individuals who plan to build, and two are for sale. Karen Lanterman of Cornish and Carey said both are more than one acre and are listed for $575,000 and $500,000.

There is no statute of limitations for murder, but two of the Los Altos mysteries are without bodies. The third is without suspects.

Miller-Carlotto has been gone almost five years. Hey, now in charge of the homicide team in the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, hasn't stopped thinking about her.

"All the autopsy reports of any homicide in the county come across my desk and I'm always looking," he said. "For the family's sake, we would love to have closure to the case."