2 Youths to Be Tried as Adults in Slaying of Friend’s Father : Crime: Judge cites sophistication of the murder in rejecting a defense argument that the suspects did not intend to kill a Highland Park man.

Two Highland Park teen-agers accused of helping a 14-year-old school friend murder her father will be tried as adults in the killing, a juvenile court judge ruled Tuesday after a two-day hearing.

After commenting on the severity and sophistication of the crime, Juvenile Court Judge Orville Armstrong rejected defense arguments that Guido Anthony Cuza, 18, and Evelyn Solorzano, 16, neither of whom have a criminal record, should be tried as juveniles for their alleged roles in the murder of Daniel Allen.

Allen’s charred body was discovered last summer buried in a shallow grave alongside railroad tracks in Highland Park. Prosecutors say that Cuza, Solorzano and Allen’s 14-year-old daughter drugged Allen with a fistful of sleeping pills, then shot him in the head in his apartment.

Later, authorities say, the three took Allen to the railroad tracks, where--before burying him--they tried to burn his body to make identification more difficult.

The 14-year-old is scheduled to be tried in January in Eastlake Juvenile Court on charges of first-degree murder. Prosecutors sought to try Cuza and Solorzano as adults because each of them was 16 or older at the time of the killing.

During the hearing, prosecutors played tape-recorded confessions given by the two older teen-agers, who described planning and executing the crime.

But defense lawyers Brady Sullivan and Dale Taguchi, representing Cuza and Solorzano respectively, both suggested that the two older teen-agers never took the murder plan seriously and never really intended to murder Allen.

The lawyers indicated that Allen’s daughter was the driving force behind the killing and that Cuza and Solorzano, each for their own reasons, got swept up in events.

In his taped statement, Cuza, who was in love with Allen’s daughter and married her last April in Tijuana, said Allen was physically abusing the 14-year-old, who had come from Texas to live with Allen less than a year before.

Friends said that Allen was a strict father and grew angry when his daughter missed school and stayed out late. Twice, officials at the girl’s school filed incident reports with the Police Department after the girl was injured during their fights, police testified.

“He was trying to discipline her but he took it too far,” Cuza said, crying audibly on the tape. “I couldn’t understand how he could say he loved her and still hit her.”

Sullivan also argued that Cuza had suffered brain damage as a result of a 1987 car accident and that the damage impaired his judgment.

Fresh details also emerged about Solorzano, a baby-faced teen-ager described by authorities as a bright bookworm with a penchant for murder mysteries such as “Gorky Park” and “Bizarre Murders.” Solorzano was at the library when she was arrested for the killing, police said.

In her confession, Solorzano said she and Cuza were close friends but said that she had only become friendly with Allen’s daughter about a month before the killing.

When Cuza and Allen’s daughter came to her with the idea of killing Allen, Solorzano said she gave them several suggestions how they could do it, but she said she never took it seriously.

“It started out as a joke, I guess,” she said. “I was just going along with it.”

Later, though, Solorzano said, she took a gun from her brother’s bedroom to use for the killing.

Court-appointed psychiatrist Michael Coburn testified that Solorzano had been physically abused as a child and so was willing to help Allen’s daughter, who Solorzano believed also was being abused.

“She identified” with Allen’s daughter, Coburn testified. “She was able to convince herself to do something which afterwards she realized was wrong.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Shane Burns said that both teen-agers were well aware of what they were doing when they killed Allen.

“If you felt it wasn’t really going to occur, why would you bring gasoline to burn the body and a shovel to dig the grave?” he asked. “This murder was sophisticated, refined and done with a polished technique.”

At the conclusion of the hearing, after he issued his ruling, Armstrong said he was “at a loss” to explain why the two teen-agers with no prior criminal records had been driven to kill.