San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow issued a scathing response Wednesday following the news that Alberto Tamez, Jr., a man convicted of a brutal 1974 murder, is being released from the California Men’s Colony.
The release comes after Governor Gavin Newsom declined to intervene or reverse a December 2025 parole board decision, a move that was finalized on April 24, 2026.
The case remains one of the most chilling in the history of Nipomo. In June 1974, Genevieve Adaline Moreno was working a night shift at the Old Blues Bar. When her husband arrived to pick her up, he found a ransacked business and an empty bar.
Moreno’s body was discovered hours later under a grove of eucalyptus trees, just a quarter-mile away. Medical examiners concluded she had been beaten, kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death.
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Tamez was caught the same morning with blood on his hands and clothing covered in debris from the crime scene. He eventually admitted to the kidnapping and the beating, describing how he ignored Moreno’s pleas for mercy as he dragged her from the bar to the field where she took her last breath.
District Attorney Dow emphasized that his office has spent years fighting to keep Tamez behind bars, including successfully blocking a recent 2023 attempt by Tamez to have his murder conviction vacated under new state laws. Dow argued that Tamez was not a “peripheral figure” but the sole, admitted killer.
“I am deeply troubled that our criminal and victim justice system has reached a result where the man who brutally murdered Genevieve Moreno over fifty years ago will now walk free,” Dow said in his statement. “My office fought this outcome at every stage. He was the killer. He admitted it. The evidence was overwhelming.”
Despite the DA’s opposition, the Board of Parole Hearings granted Tamez’s release in late 2025. The final hope for the prosecution rested with the Governor’s office, which holds the power to review and reverse parole for those convicted of murder. By taking no action by the April deadline, the Governor allowed the parole to stand.
Tamez, now 75, is immediately eligible for parole. For the community and the Moreno family, the decision marks a painful end to a five-decade quest for permanent accountability.
Dow concluded his statement by promising that his office would not forget Moreno’s life, even as her killer walks free.
“Genevieve Moreno deserved better,” Dow said. “She deserved the full protection of justice.”
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