TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

A Bakersfield murder investigation took a bizarre turn Thursday when police found human remains buried in the yards of two different homes.

Details were sparse but police arrested a man on suspicion of murder. He was identified as Frank Valles, 45.

The arrest came after the remains were found Wednesday at both locations, said Bakersfield Police Detective Michael Coronado.

“They did in fact locate a burial site in the rear yard of that location,” the detective said of a home in the 5900 block of Grass Creek Drive near Harris and Buena Vista roads in southwest Bakersfield.

He would not specify what, exactly, was discovered, so it was unclear if the deceased was male or female, an entire corpse or merely bones, or if there was more than one body.

Police got a tip Tuesday that led them to the home, Coronado said. They found Valles at the home and detained him.

The tipster who originally notified police also gave them the name of another individual who might have pertinent information. That person was also located and questioned, Coronado said.

The interrogation of Valles and the other individual — who police declined to identify — gave them reason to go to another home, Coronado said. That home is on Curnow Road between South Union Avenue and Highway 99, an area in the middle of an agricultural field.

Police would not say how Valles was connected to either of the addresses.

Police were originally dispatched on Tuesday to a suspicious circumstance report at 4216 Crescent Rock Lane, and someone there told officers about a possible burial site at the home on Grass Creek.

The Crescent Rock Lane house is listed in court filings as the home of Consuelo Valles, who filed for divorce from Frank Valles on July 19, asking the court to order him to stay away from her and stop texting her.

Police have talked to Consuleo Valles in the course of investigating the case, Coronado said. The Californian couldn’t reach her for comment.

Frank Valles had two residences listed in court records tied to the divorce: the properties on Curnow and Grass Creek Drive that police searched.

The divorce appeared to have been contentious.

Consuelo Valles, who married Frank Valles on June 6, 2003, sought a restraining order against her husband when she filed for divorce in July, stating she was “very frightened of him.”

The restraining order was granted July 30.

Consuelo described a meeting with Valles in the parking lot of a Kohl’s department store where they argued out why she was not answering phone calls from him.

“I finally left and went to work,” Consuelo Valles wrote in the divorce filing. “I have heard he wants to kill me.”

Several neighbors said Frank Valles used to live in the Curnow Road house but hadn’t lived there in a few months.

Robert Valow, who lives on nearby McCornac Avenue, said Valles had lived in a trailer on the property and a wife and daughter lived in the main house.

Valow said he didn’t know what to make of all the law enforcement in what is normally a quiet, rural neighborhood.

“Hell, you never know anymore,” he said.

The 43,500-square-foot Curnow Road lot where excavation was continuing Thursday is surrounded on three sides by empty fields and contains both a residential structure and a large outbuilding that Valow said was used for storage.

Neighbors said they were surprised by the investigation, adding that Valles was always friendly and polite.

“He seemed like a really nice guy,” said Michael Gentry, 19, who lives across the street with his grandmother. “He was always really helpful. When I was looking for work, he was trying to help me find a job.”

Both Valow and Michael’s grandmother, Shirlene Gentry, said they hadn’t noticed anything especially unusual at the house. There had been a big party there shortly before the family moved out, neighbors said, and not long after they left someone put a screen up on the property’s chain-link fence so that it was harder to see into the yard. A “no trespassing” sign also went up there.

As far as the neighbors knew, the home had been unoccupied since Valles left.

Thursday morning, both BPD personnel and coroner’s staff were digging with shovels in the backyard of the Curnow Road location. At least five people in T-shirts with either BPD or county coroner logos were digging with shovels, then putting the dirt they had scooped through a couple of sifters. The people operating the sifters wore rubber gloves and periodically peered at the dirt closely.

Several BPD detectives were also at the scene walking the property and monitoring the digging.

A BPD mobile command post was dispatched to the scene and parked in the backyard behind yellow police tape.

At the Grass Creek Drive address, there was evidence of digging to the north side of the house, behind a fence. It appeared Thursday morning that a concrete slab had been removed, and there was a hole three to four feet deep, but police were no longer there.
 

— Californian staff photographer Henry A. Barrios and reporter Jason Kotowski contributed to this report.