Las Vegas law enforcement authorities have arrested Jenaro Torres, a former Pearl Harbor police officer indicted this month for the 1992 murder of Ruben Gallegos, a base cashier.

The whereabouts of Torres were not known when an O'ahu grand jury indicted him, but investigators with the state attorney general's cold case unit said they believed he was living in Southern California or Las Vegas.

He was found Wednesday in the locker room of a fitness gym he used at Nellis Air Force Base, said Jack Clements, a detective with the Las Vegas Metro Police Department.

Torres was calm and cool when taken into custody and did not appear to know he was a wanted man, Clements said. He was arrested without incident.

"The only question he asked was, 'When did the warrant come out?' " the detective said. "He said he has been living on the street and living out of his car. I think he has been sleeping here and there."

Torres is accused of killing Gallegos, 20, during a robbery of $80,000 from the Pearl Harbor Navy Exchange on May 1, 1992. The cashier's body has never been found.

That same day, investigators found a brown satchel in the trunk of Torres' car containing all but $1,998 of the stolen money. They also found a Smith & Wesson handgun with one live round and three spent cartridges that had recently been fired, an electric shocking device, a portable police scanner and Gallegos' wallet and hairbrush.

But Torres was never charged with murder.

Instead, he pleaded no contest to charges of theft and carrying a firearm without a license. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison and three years probation.

The case was one of the first investigated by the cold case unit, which formed in February, and it did not rely on new evidence, said Donald Wong, chief investigator for the attorney general's office.

Torres will have an extradition hearing Tuesday. If Torres agrees to the request, he will be brought back to Hawai'i quickly, but if he says no, it will take a governor's warrant to make that happen, Wong said.

Either way, Torres should be in custody here inside of a month, Wong said.

"He is coming back," he said.

The attorney general sent the case to a task force in Las Vegas that included the FBI. It teamed up with Air Force investigators just before Christmas, said Clements, the Las Vegas detective in charge of the case.

Authorities knew that Torres had often been in excellent physical condition and suspected that he would probably be living on limited income near Nellis, a huge base 10 miles north of downtown Las Vegas, Clements said.

Felons are required to register with law enforcement authorities when they move to Nevada, but Torres never updated his information. He did not appear to have a job or an address, Clements said.

But he was a retired Marine. Authorities thought he might show up at a gym used by the area's large community of retired military personnel, Clements said.

A wanted flier describing Torres was discreetly distributed at the base. That brought a call Wednesday night, the detective said.

"I'll take lucky over good any day," Clements said, acknowledging their good fortune at plucking Torres from a community of 1.7 million people.

"Law enforcement people in Hawai'i gave us good tips," Clements said. "It was a matter of pounding the pavement, playing some hunches and seeing what pans out. And we got lucky."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.