Several of the suspects I wrote about have either been tried or are awaiting trial. Other cases are still lingering in the limbo of the unsolved files. As of this writing, close to two-and-a-half years after I completed my research at Homicide Special:
Alexander Gabay was sentenced in March 2002 to twenty-five years to life in prison for killing Luda Petushenko. His girlfriend, Oxana, testified against him and was not prosecuted.
The preliminary hearing for Kazumi Taga was held in the fall of 2001. A judge determined there was enough evidence to hold him for trial in the murder of his wife, Yuriko, and daughter, Michelle. Friends of Yuriko’s testified at the hearing that she became violently ill on two occasions after eating food prepared by Taga. Detectives suspected he attempted to poison her, and he faced two additional counts of attempted murder.
Taga pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. But two years later, to avoid the possibility of receiving the death penalty after a trial, Taga pleaded guilty to killing his wife and daughter and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The murder of Stephanie Gorman remains unsolved. Detectives, however, have renewed hope. Currently, LAPD detectives looking for palm print matches have to manually compare them with those found at crime scenes. But a new FBI system will soon be available and detectives looking for a match will be able to enter anonymous palm prints into an automated identification system filled with databases containing the palm prints of millions of felons.
Dave Lambkin and Tim Marcia hope that the unidentified palm prints from the Gorman house will lead them to the killer.
The murder of Susan Berman also remains unsolved. But detectives are interested in a bizarre development involving Berman’s longtime friend Robert Durst.
In September 2001, a teenage boy discovered the headless torso of a Texas man floating in Galveston Bay. Nearby, divers found the man’s arms and legs stuffed in garbage bags, which also contained papers that led police to a Galveston apartment building. They followed a trail of blood between the seventy-one-year-old murder victim’s apartment and a spartan studio that the landlord said was rented by a middle-aged mute woman named Dorothy.
Investigators believe that Durst—disguised as a woman and wearing a blond wig, pantsuit, and low heels—rented the apartment and stayed there occasionally. The new tenant told the landlord that she would have to communicate with him by writing notes because her voice box had been operated on numerous times.
A week after the body parts were found, Durst was arrested, charged with the murder, and released after posting bail. At his next court hearing, he did not appear and was finally apprehended seven weeks later in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested for stealing a sandwich from a grocery store.
Detectives eventually obtained a court order for Durst’s handwriting sample and compared it to the note that alerted police to Berman’s body. LAPD handwriting analysts have concluded that Durst’s sample is closer to the writing on the note than Nyle’s sample. They are now certain Nyle was not involved in Berman’s murder.
While Paul Coulter and Jerry Stephens were not happy that they might have been misdirected because of the original handwriting analysis, they know that the person who wrote the note was disguising his writing, which makes the analyst’s job quite difficult.
In November 2003, a Texas jury found Durst not guilty of murder, even though he admitted he dismembered his neighbor’s corpse, stuffed the man’s limbs in garbage bags, and tossed them into the ocean. Both the defense and the prosecution decided not to ask jurors to consider lesser charges, such as manslaughter.
Homicide Special Detectives are currently trying to determine Durst’s whereabouts on the night Berman was murdered.
Jammie Hendrix, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, was bound over for trial after his September 2002 preliminary hearing. He has not yet been tried.
In April 2002, Robert Blake was arrested and charged with the murder of Bonny Bakley, in addition to solicitation of murder and conspiracy. His bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, was also arrested and charged with conspiracy. Caldwell was released on $1 million bail, but Blake was denied bail and remained in jail.
I followed only the first few months of the Bakley case. Detectives eventually interviewed more than 150 witnesses and traveled to more than twenty states. I am not going to attempt to summarize the mammoth investigation, which I did not observe.
The case against Blake was significantly advanced when detectives persuaded a second stuntman, Ronald Hambleton, to talk. Hambleton previously denied that Blake had asked him to kill Bakley, but when he was faced with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury he acknowledged that Blake solicited him to kill his wife. Hambleton told detectives a story similar to Gary McLarty’s, the other stuntman who said Blake asked him to kill Bakley.
About two months before the murder, Blake suggested to Hambleton a number of different ways to kill his wife, he told detectives. On one occasion, Hambleton said, Blake drove him to the parking lot next to Vitello’s restaurant and discussed several potential spots nearby where Bakley could be killed. Blake told Hambleton that as Bakley sat in a car on the street, he could walk up next to her and kill her.
Several times, Blake asked how much Hambleton would charge for the hit. Hambleton, however, did not name a price because he never intended to kill her.
A critical piece of evidence, the detectives believe, is the prepaid phone card that Hambleton suggested Blake purchase. Hambleton was under the impression the card could not be traced. But the detectives tracked down the phone card and a record of all the calls made on it. They discovered that Blake had called Hambleton’s home more than fifty times and had called the other stuntman, Gary McLarty, several times.
Detectives also interviewed a private investigator and former LAPD detective who said that Blake told him in October 1999 that if Bakley would not have an abortion, he intended to “whack” her.
A judge ruled at the preliminary hearing that Blake had the motive and the opportunity to murder his wife and ruled that he and Caldwell must stand trial. Blake, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, was released on $1.5 million bail.
Eight months later, the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence proving that Blake conspired with his handyman to murder Bakley and threw out the entire case against Caldwell.
The murder trial was delayed, partly because two of Blake’s lead criminal defense attorneys had differences with him and quit the case.
As of this writing, Blake is still awaiting trial.
Homicide Special recently created a cold case unit and appointed Dave Lambkin to head the section. His partner, Tim Marcia, and Rick Jackson were also transferred to the seven-detective team. Most of the other detectives I wrote about are still in the squad room, except for Jerry Stephens and Rich Haro, who have retired, and Chuck Knolls, who works as a patrol sergeant in the Wilshire Division.