Father's criminal history a shock

Father's criminal history a shock
Dead boy's maternal relatives say he was happy about staying with his dad.

By Silvina Martínez -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Friday, August 30, 2002
Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/4192334p-5214682c.html

Christopher Cejas came to Sacramento for the summer, eager to get to know his father.
At home in North Carolina, school was hard and kids in his fifth-grade class were picking on him. Time with dad might help.

His mother, Alex Cejas, expected her son to return to her in the fall, ready to start sixth grade.
Instead, the 12-year-old boy's body arrives in Charlotte today to be escorted from the airport by his uncle and his uncle's motorcycle club friends, the way his family thought Christopher would have loved.

Last week in Sacramento, Christopher was found beaten to death. His father, Andrew Cejas, 43, a registered sex offender, is in the Sacramento County jail on suspicion of murder.

Christopher was Alex Cejas' only child. She can't talk about her son's death, only about how the two played and collected Pokémon cards together.

"He was my best bud," the 36-year-old woman said Thursday.

At Chris' home, family and friends wore buttons with the boy's picture and prepared for funeral services scheduled for this weekend.

Nobody in the family knew Andrew Cejas' criminal history, said the boy's aunt, Dee Clayton.

Christopher was only 6 months old when his father left and moved to California. He grew up with his mother and his grandparents in a quiet, close-knit neighborhood in Charlotte. He played basketball, swam and loved watergun fights.

But lately Christopher had started to ask more questions about his father. And Andrew Cejas, who had kept in touch with the boy's mother throughout the years, agreed to have his son in Sacramento for the summer.

Christopher came to stay with his father in April and everything seemed to go well. He complained just about two things: The little kids -- his stepmother's three children -- were kind of aggravating, and the food was not great.

Otherwise, Christopher seemed happy every time he called his mother in Charlotte. He and his dad, he told her, were lifting weights together and doing fine.

Sacramento sheriff's detectives said Christopher was probably beaten for more than an hour before he was found dead in his father's apartment on Watt Avenue on Aug. 26. They found evidence that the boy was tortured, that he died at his father's hands.

"This man," Clayton said about Cejas, "we don't know."

During his marriage to Christopher's mother, Clayton said, "He never displayed this type of personality. Not to us. He never even raised his voice to my sister."

But Sacramento County court records show Cejas, a self-employed construction worker, is a registered sex offender with a criminal history of violence.

In 1993, he was arrested on three felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14; one count was dropped and he pleaded no contest to the other two. In 1999 he was arrested on a charge of striking his current wife with a beer bottle and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.

Earlier this year, Cejas was arrested after he failed to maintain his registration as a sex offender and was sentenced to 180 days in the county work program.

"We are finding out things," Clayton said. Cejas once called his ex-wife in Charlotte and told her he had been maliciously accused of something he hadn't done. "We searched the Internet to check on him and found nothing," Clayton said.

Cejas had children with two other women after he divorced Christopher's mother.
His current wife fled the apartment with her three kids the day Christopher was beaten to death. She was afraid and called authorities. Police didn't release her name, saying she is a victim of domestic violence.

Clayton doesn't remember Andrew Cejas being violent.

"He never did anything physical to my sister," she said. "He just broke her heart."

When Christopher was born, she said, he was young and couldn't deal with it. So he left.
Years later, his son really wanted to know about him. "He was excited to meet his father," said Clayton. "He was curious to find out that part of his life."

About the Writer
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The Bee's Silvina Martínez can be reached at (916) 321-1159 or smartinez@sacbee.com.