Crime Beat (18 page)

In fact, he said, “we find a great number of people have never adopted the mores of society in the first place. And they can’t or don’t want to once they return from prison.”

Kamm said that, although the answer to that might be the warehousing of career criminals to keep them from society, California laws aimed at enhancing sentences for repeat offenders and putting habitual criminals permanently in prison are often circumvented.

“The reality is that there are too many holes in those laws,” he said. “People can get through them.”

Lynn said Comtois had to commit an aggravated crime such as he is now accused of before he could be considered under the habitual crime law. He said Comtois’ previous convictions for robbery, burglary and drugs would not have applied.

Coming and Going

“Under our system, you don’t do life until you do something it considers serious,” Lynn said. “As long as he stayed below that line, he was one of the guys who kept coming in and going out.”

Although guidelines allow longer sentences for criminals with previous convictions, it appears Comtois reduced his time in prison by pleading guilty in almost all of his convictions. When he faced the drug and weapon charges in 1974, records show that, in exchange for his guilty plea, his previous convictions were not considered at sentencing.

Finally, authorities suggest, the system is too crowded and has too few resources to give individuals the attention required for true rehabilitation or for the protection of society.

“The system cannot accommodate the intense flow of individuals,” Kamm said. “Too frequently, individuals never get out of the cycle. They may wind up doing intense damage to somebody.”

Roland Comtois’ Criminal Record

April 1941: At age 11, he is charged with petty theft and diagnosed as an incorrigible delinquent. He is committed to reform school in Attleboro, Mass.

March 1947: Charged with breaking and entering in West Concord, Mass. He is given an indeterminate sentence limited to two years.

May 1952: Charged with assault with intent to commit rape in New Bedford, Mass. He is sentenced to three to five years in prison.

August 1955: Charged in Massachusetts in Peeping Tom incident. His parole is revoked.

February 1960: Charged with attempted bank robbery in Los Angeles. He is sentenced to one year in federal prison.

May 1960: Charged with burglary in La Mirada. His sentence is set to run concurrently with federal imprisonment.

July 1961: Charged with robbery in Los Angeles. He is sentenced to five years to life in state prison.

July 1974: Charged with possession of heroin with intent to sell and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He is sentenced to five years in state prison.

March 18, 1987: Charged with grand theft and forgery in Los Angeles. The case is pending.

June 1, 1987: Charged with burglary in Los Angeles. The case is pending.

July 27, 1987: Charged with car theft in Los Angeles. Case dismissed.

Sept. 24, 1987: Charged with murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and several other felonies in Los Angeles. Case is pending.

Source:
Court records and probation reports

NOTE:
Roland Comtois was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. In poor health because of drug abuse as well as being shot during his capture, he died in prison in 1994 while awaiting the carrying out of the sentence. Marsha Lynn Erickson was convicted of being his accomplice in the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

PART THREE

THE CASES

NAMELESS GRAVE

IDENTITY OF MURDER VICTIM STILL SHROUDED IN MYSTERY

SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL

April 14, 1986

T
HE GRAVE AT
Hollywood Memorial Gardens has no name on it. There simply isn’t one to put there. The identity of the man who is buried there is a mystery.

He was murdered March 11, 1985, in a Fort Lauderdale motel room. He was strangled. Authorities have since solved the mystery of who killed him; one man was convicted and sentenced to life in prison last week, and another suspect is being sought.

What remains to be learned is the identity of the victim.

“We don’t have anything, not a clue to who he was,” said Edwina Johnson, an investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office. “We have gone to great lengths to find out. We’ve done everything we could think of and gotten no luck whatsoever. It would seem that somebody has to know who he was.”

Fort Lauderdale Police Detective Phil Mundy said that in his 10 years in the homicide bureau there have been unidentified murder victims before, but not a case where a killer is caught and convicted while the name of the victim remains unknown.

“It’s unusual,” he said. “In a whodunit type of murder, you first try to identify the dead man and go from there. But we never got anywhere with the identification. All we have is a dead man who has nothing extraordinary about his appearance. He could fit the description of thousands of men.”

On police and medical examiner’s records, the murder victim is simply known as “unidentified white male, case no. 85-43959.” On court documents, photographs of the man slumped in the motel room and laid out on a medical examiner’s table are attached to that identification.

The man is described as having been 5-foot-8, weighing 180 pounds, with brown hair, eyes and mustache. He was approximately 35 years old.

He was found sprawled on the floor of a room at the Interlude Motel, 1215 S. Federal Highway. Police think he accompanied two male prostitutes to the room and then was robbed and killed. His body was nude. There were no clothes or other belongings in the room. No wallet. No I.D. Just the signs of a struggle and a bloody handprint on the wall—a print that would later lead to the identification of one of his killers.

“There was nothing left in that room that could help us identify the victim,” said Mundy. “The killers took it with them.”

So the detective started with the dead man’s fingerprints. They were sent to state and national agencies, to Canadian authorities and to Interpol for comparison. They got no matches.

Missing persons bulletins were sent out across the country with an artist’s drawing of the victim attached. A few leads came back, but they were dead ends.

“Nothing panned out. They weren’t our guy,” said Mundy. “Usually the description wouldn’t match. We ran down a few of the names we got and found each guy was still alive and well.”

Locally, investigators had the drawing published in newspapers and magazines, put it on TV, passed it around hotels and bars frequented by a mostly homosexual clientele. They found no one who had seen the man.

Believing the victim had been a tourist, investigators checked with auto rental agencies in Broward in hopes of finding a report of an overdue car with the name of the murder victim on it. They visited local car towing agencies to check on abandoned vehicles that had been towed in the city after the murder. They found no clues.

“If he did rent a car, God knows where he rented it,” said Mundy.

A month after the murder, the bloody palm print on the wall of the motel room led to the positive identification of Peter L. Ruggirello as a suspect. He was arrested in Jacksonville a year ago today. His accomplice, a man police identified as Wayne Moore, remains at large.

Mundy said Ruggirello never cooperated with investigators in providing the name of the murder victim. At his trial in Broward Circuit Court, Ruggirello said the man’s name was Adam and that he had met him and Moore near the Backstreet bar on West Broward Boulevard near downtown. He denied being involved in the murder.

Prosecutor Peter LaPorte said an informant told authorities that Ruggirello once said the man’s name was Henry Faulkner. Authorities aren’t sure whether either of the names is the real one but believe Ruggirello knows more about the man he is convicted of killing than he has said.

“There are still a lot of questions that only Ruggirello and the individual that is still at large could answer,” said Mundy.

Because of those questions, Mundy keeps the investigation file on the top of his desk. The case is still open, though the chances of identifying the victim grow slimmer with time.

“My guess is he was from out of state,” Mundy said. “He could have been reported missing in some other jurisdiction and we might never know it.”

DOUBLE LIFE

MICHAEL BRYANT’S DOUBLE LIFE

Neighbors who knew the amiable man are shaken by the murder charge against him.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

April 22, 1990

T
O THOSE WHO KNEW
him in Woodland Hills, Michael Bryant was a soft-spoken and generous man who kept mostly to himself.

Though reclusive, he was far from unfriendly. He was quick to volunteer his help to neighbors. He sent Christmas cards and friendly notes to his landlady. He liked to show off the tricks he had taught his pet Doberman.

Bryant, 44, told people he was a freelance photographer. But often he spent his time gardening in his fenced backyard and was proud of the cherry tomatoes he gave to friends. “They were better than you could buy in a supermarket,” his landlady said.

But authorities say Michael Bryant and the life he led in Los Angeles was a facade; that, in fact, Bryant was Francis W. Malinosky, a Vermont school administrator who dropped from sight in 1979 after he became the prime suspect in the disappearance of a teacher with whom he had been romantically involved.

Malinosky’s double life came to an end earlier this month when he was traced by local and Vermont authorities to Woodland Hills. He was arrested and charged with the murder of the missing teacher. And while Malinosky waits in Los Angeles County jail for an extradition hearing, mystery still surrounds him.

Investigators say that when they searched Malinosky’s belongings they found cameras and a business card suggesting he, indeed, was a photographer. But the only photos found were of him smiling amid fields of marijuana plants. No tomatoes were found at his house, but police said several pounds of packaged marijuana seeds were found in the garage. And in the unpretentious, 23-year-old Volkswagen he drove, investigators found a coffee can crammed with $217,000 in $100 bills.

“Finding this guy just opened up more questions,” said Sgt. Leo Blais, a Vermont State Police detective who has tracked the Malinosky case for years. “I am trying to get an idea of what he has been doing for 10 years and it is hard. We don’t know much about him.”

Those who thought they knew Michael Bryant of Woodland Hills have also had to face the same enigma. A man they viewed as a good neighbor or tenant is charged with murder and is suspected of hiding behind at least four aliases and earning his living at least in part by selling marijuana seeds along with instructions on their planting and cultivation.

“This really comes out of left field,” said Lilian Darling Holt, Bryant’s landlord for nearly five years. “It is devastating. Michael was a marvelous tenant and person.

“This whole thing doesn’t seem right,” she said. “It seems that over the years there would have been something that would now click and I’d be able to say, ‘Son of a gun, I now see how this could be.’ But there is nothing like that. I just feel very bad. I wish I could do something for him.”

Holt is not alone in being both perplexed and supportive of Bryant. Neighbors he was friendly with in the 4900 block of Topanga Canyon Boulevard have volunteered to care for his dog while he is in jail. And an attorney who met Bryant a few years ago in a coffee shop is now helping him fight extradition to Vermont.

“There is complete shock among those who knew him,” said the attorney, Greff Michael Abrams. “He was the kind of guy most people would want as a neighbor.”

Abrams said Malinosky disappeared from Vermont and began using false names because he was being hounded by authorities for a crime he did not commit.

“There is more to this case than meets the eye,” Abrams said. “You don’t need to be a genius to see why he would leave Vermont. He believed a witch hunt was under way, and he decided to leave.”

But authorities insist they have made no mistake. Malinosky is the only suspect in the Nov. 5, 1979, disappearance and apparent murder of Judith Leo-Coneys. The 32-year-old mother of a small boy disappeared after telling friends she was going to a house owned by Malinosky.

“Everyone out here I talk to about him can’t believe it,” said Blais while he was in Los Angeles last week investigating Malinosky’s life here. “They keep telling me he isn’t the type.”

So far Blais has established that Malinosky lived in the Los Angeles area in the early 1980s and worked as a house painter. He later moved to Utah and then back to Los Angeles, where beginning in late 1985 he lived alone in the two-bedroom Topanga Canyon Boulevard house.

Along the way, Malinosky somehow picked up one alias—Barry Vandiver Bryant—that actually was the name of a real person, Blais said. The real Barry Bryant, of Charlotte, N.C., has since changed his name because of credit problems that began when Malinosky took his identity.

In 1979, Malinosky was, on the surface, an unlikely murder suspect. He had taught for several years in Burlington area schools and was known to many in the northern Vermont community. At 34, he was assistant director of special education for the Burlington School Department.

Bearded and slightly balding, he was a man who enjoyed the outdoors. He had an apartment in Burlington and owned a house in the rural town of Shelburne, which was more convenient for hunting and skiing. A mellow-voiced widower, his wife having shot herself to death in 1976, Malinosky was raising a daughter and son.

But in mid-1979 Malinosky’s life apparently went into a tailspin when Leo-Coneys broke off a two-year relationship with him. According to Chittenden County court records, he was deeply hurt by the breakup, had sought psychiatric counseling and had been seen at least once spying through the windows of Leo-Coneys’ apartment.

Two weeks before her disappearance, Leo-Coneys was held at gunpoint by Malinosky for several hours while he unsuccessfully attempted to persuade her to resume their relationship, records say.

On the morning of Nov. 5, 1979, Leo-Coneys told friends and relatives she was going to drop by Malinosky’s home in Shelburne to retrieve something of hers. She chose that morning to go because she knew he was scheduled to be at work in Burlington.

But Leo-Coneys was never seen again. She was reported missing by her family later that day and investigators learned that Malinosky had not gone to work or even called his office to explain why. That night, when he was spotted driving his van in Shelburne and questioned by police, he said he took the day off to go bird hunting and did not see Leo-Coneys.

Leo-Coneys’ car was found at a junkyard in the town of Roxbury the next day. A handwritten note on the windshield said the car could be stripped for parts and was signed “R. Peterson.”

Malinosky was questioned repeatedly after the disappearance. But on Dec. 2, 1979, he put his children on a bus to his former in-laws’ home, emptied his bank accounts and disappeared. Though Leo-Coneys’ body has never been found, authorities claim they have amassed convincing evidence pointing to Malinosky.

According to court records, FBI experts matched Malinosky’s handwriting to the note found on Leo-Coneys’ car at the Roxbury junkyard. Investigators also found a cab driver who reported picking Malinosky up in Roxbury on the day of the woman’s disappearance. A cab dispatcher who took the call remembered talking to Malinosky. She had once been one of his students.

Detectives had also noticed while interviewing Malinosky the first time that his parka was torn and leaking its down filling. The same type of down was found in Leo-Coneys’ car, court records say.

Police believed after Malinosky’s disappearance that he might have killed himself, and the case languished without any charges being filed.

In 1986, the Leo-Coneys case was assigned to Blais to be updated and, using a computer search, the detective learned Malinosky was alive and had apparently lived in Salt Lake City in the mid-1980s, where he used his own name to get a driver’s license.

Blais went to Utah but Malinosky was gone.

Once again, the case languished, until last year when a new state attorney, William Sorrell, was appointed and made the Leo-Coneys investigation a priority. The case was presented Feb. 20, 1990, to a grand jury, which concluded that Leo-Coneys was dead, and a warrant was issued two days later charging Malinosky with her slaying.

According to court records, Malinosky’s daughter told investigators she had met her father earlier this year at the St. Moritz Hotel in New York City. Blais learned that the hotel room Malinosky used was paid for by a credit card issued to a Barry Vandiver Bryant. From that point, credit card billings under that name were traced to four private mailboxes in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood.

Members of the Los Angeles Police Department fugitive squad questioned the private mailbox proprietors, who identified Barry Bryant as Malinosky. And on April 12, the detectives were alerted by one of the mail-drop operators that Bryant had just picked up his mail.

Police and FBI agents immediately went to the area on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, but Bryant was already gone.

The investigators decided to check area motels, and a clerk at a Best Western in the 21800 block of Ventura Boulevard identified a photo of Malinosky as a guest who had been renting a room since Feb. 20—the day the grand jury hearing began in Vermont. Investigators now believe he moved to the motel after learning, possibly through friends or family in Vermont, that the grand jury was investigating the case.

Police watched the motel room and Malinosky was arrested that afternoon when he drove up in his 1967 Volkswagen. He had papers identifying himself as Michael Bryant and that showed his address as a house about five blocks away on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

In the car, police found the coffee can containing $217,000, along with a material normally used to keep moisture out of packages. Detectives said the powder indicated the can of money may have been buried previously.

Investigators were puzzled by where Malinosky had gotten the cash. But the next day, his house was searched and dozens of packets of marijuana seeds were found in the garage. Police theorized that Malinosky may have accumulated the cache of money by selling drugs or the seeds.

Los Angeles Police Detective Ronald Tuckett said marijuana cultivation instructions and other drug paraphernalia were found in the garage.

“It looks like he may have been in the mail-order business,” Tuckett said.

Though the drug investigation is continuing, it is unlikely local charges will be filed against Malinosky because they could hinder his extradition to Vermont to face the murder charge, authorities said.

Alerted on the morning of April 12, the day Malinosky picked up his mail, Blais was already flying from Vermont to Los Angeles when the man he had pursued since 1986 was taken into custody. The detective and suspect met for the first time in a holding cell.

“All he did was stare at the ground,” Blais said. “He was very upset. I introduced myself and he said, ‘I know who you are.’ I said, ‘I know who you are, too, but do you want me to call you Frank or Michael or Barry or what?’ He said to call him Frank. It was a strange feeling to finally meet him face to face.”