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Wendy's chili Finger-finder has history of legal battles
Finger-finder has history of legal battles
Police search home, take Wal-Mart bag, plastic lunch box
Ryan Kim, Dave Murphy, Alan Gathright, Chronicle Staff Writers
Saturday, April 9, 2005
Las Vegas -- The woman who found a finger in a bowl of chili at a San Jose Wendy's has a history of legal battles, including an earlier claim against a restaurant alleging tainted food sickened her daughter.
Anna Ayala, 39, an unemployed janitorial service operator, has drawn the scrutiny of police in the mysterious finger case. San Jose and local police searched her Las Vegas home from top to bottom Wednesday and left with the daughter's red plastic lunch box that doubled as her makeup kit, along with a Wal-Mart shopping bag, according to the Ayala family.
San Jose police won't discuss details of the probe, saying it could compromise the investigation. Police say they're questioning anyone who can shed light on how the 1 1/2-inch fingertip found its way into Ayala's chili at Wendy's, where she was dining with relatives March 22.
"We're just trying to do a thorough investigation and find out what the truth is," said San Jose police Lt. Stan Faulwetter, head of the financial crimes unit.
But Ayala accuses police of conducting a bizarre witch hunt against her family. She said officers burst into her home with guns drawn during the raid, injuring her 13-year-old daughter's shoulder as they forced people to the ground.
Ken Bono, 24, a family friend who lives with Ayala, said Lt. Faulwetter told him during the search that if he implicated the family, he could receive a $50,000 reward Wendy's is offering to anyone who reveals how the finger got in the chili.
"He said to say that I saw them have (the finger) or bring it," Bono said. "He wanted me to lie or tell the truth to implicate them."
Faulwetter said police did mention the $50,000 reward, but that's all. He denied encouraging Bono to lie.
"This is an ongoing criminal investigation," Faulwetter said. "We have to look at all possibilities and angles to find the truth."
Ayala, who said her sister in San Jose has received death threats over the notorious case, considers the treatment by police to be worse than the original Wendy's incident. "That was just the wrong place at the wrong time, but now I have to deal with this torture," she said. "I have been victimized twice."
Ayala denies media rumors that the finger came from a dead aunt, saying that all of her aunts are alive.
Ayala said what happened Wednesday convinced her that she should sue Wendy's. "I'm really going to fight this now because they hurt my baby," Ayala said, referring to her daughter.
Ayala, who has hired an attorney to explore legal action against Wendy's, is no stranger to legal fights, including ones against restaurants.
When the woman's daughter, Genesis Reyes, contracted salmonella poisoning in 2003 after eating at a Las Vegas El Pollo Loco, the family successfully demanded that the restaurant pay for $30,000 in medical bills she racked up during a three-day hospitalization, said Bono and the woman's son, Guadalupe Reyes. An El Pollo Loco official could not confirm the incident late Friday.
In 2000, she sued a San Jose car dealership and Goodyear Tire Corp., saying she was severely injured after a front tire fell off her GMC Sierra sport utility vehicle as she drove on Interstate 880 in San Jose in 1999. She also sued General Motors Corp.
A judge later dismissed the case, but not before Ayala repeatedly changed attorneys. One of her lawyers accused her of threatening him, even though he'd won her a settlement in a prior lawsuit.
"Despite this, you stated that you were going to get me -- whatever that means,'' San Francisco attorney Ira Freydkis wrote Ayala in January 2001. Freydkis suggested he withdraw as her counsel, because she had stated she was "unhappy" with his work, according to the letter filed in court documents.
In 1999, Ayala filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against La Oferta Review, a San Jose Spanish-language newspaper, claiming a man who worked there exposed himself to her the first day she began work as a bilingual receptionist. The newspaper claimed the man, Juan Carlos Brown, was just a tenant in its building, but Ayala reached an out-of-court settlement in 2002.
Ayala and her loved ones reject claims that she concocted the chili- finger incident to bring a lawsuit against Wendy's.
The Texas native, who lived in San Jose for more than a decade, said she's made a good living working at several janitorial firms and ran her own in the South Bay. She moved three years ago to Las Vegas, where she lives with her two children.
Although Ayala has been out of work for a year because of a foot injury, she said she is financially sound and recently refinanced her two-story, four- bedroom home on the southeast outskirts of Las Vegas, which she said is worth $500,000.
Guadalupe Reyes, 18, said his mom is well-off and is not motivated by greed.
"What people are trying to say is that she's a con artist. But that's not true,'' he said. "If she's about lawsuits, why would she pay $20,000 cash for this truck?'' he added, pointing to a new Dodge pickup. "My mom's wealthy.''
Asked about reports that she's litigious, Ayala said: "All these people are saying stuff, but they don't know anything about me. The truth will come out.'' Then she added that her attorney has told her to stop talking to the news media.
Meanwhile, Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini said police hadn't been in touch with the chain's officials about the search. He added that Wendy's has received phone calls since it began offering the $50,000 reward Thursday to the first person who provides "verifiable" information on how the finger got in the chili.
Bertini did not want to say how many calls have been received, but said Wendy's is passing along information from some of the tips to San Jose police.
Santa Clara County Medical Examiner Joseph O'Hara said he's anticipating completion soon of DNA testing by state officials that could help confirm the person who lost the finger. Authorities have also sent a portion of the digit to a Kansas forensic food laboratory that could confirm by next week whether or not the finger was cooked in the chili.
While investigators have obtained a print from the fingertip, its quality is not good enough to run through databases for a match. But he added officials could visually match the fingerprint if they had a person the digit might belong too.
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