Suspect in killing of Emerald Hills woman died of pneumonia after falling ill in jail
Detectives revisited the cold case in 2019. Alfredo Hernandez allegedly strangled Terri Bistodeau, his on-again, off-again girlfriend.
Dante Ulanday - News Moderator 
Postmortem examinations revealed that a jail inmate who died last fall while awaiting trial in a cold-case murder succumbed to natural causes, authorities said Thursday.
The cause of Alfredo Hernandez’s death in a hospital on Nov. 26 was pneumonia, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.
Hernandez, who allegedly strangled his on-again, off-again girlfriend at her Emerald Hills home decades ago, had been admitted to an intensive-care unit 11 days earlier after being stricken by severe shortness of breath while jailed at the George F. Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa.
Two months before his death, Hernandez, 66, was extradited from El Salvador and booked in San Diego on suspicion of killing Terri Bistodeau, 39, who was found dead in a bedroom at her Geneva Avenue residence in August 1991, sheriff’s Lt. Juan Marquez said.
Detectives suspected Hernandez, but authorities lacked sufficient evidence to target him as the alleged killer until 2019, when a follow-up investigation on the cold case, which included DNA testing was conducted, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.
Two years later, he was charged.
Following his arrest, Hernandez twice admitted to killing Bistodeau when interviewed by investigators, prosecutors alleged.
