Crime Beat (19 page)

DEATH OF AN HEIRESS

MURDER OF KANAN HEIR REMAINS A MYSTERY

Judy Kanan, a tough-minded businesswoman, came from a pioneer family. Two men are still suspects in the 1985 slaying, but a detective says he has no idea who killed her.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

January 29, 1990

F
IVE YEARS AGO TODAY
, Judy Kanan, a strong-willed 68-year-old businesswoman and descendant of a pioneer family, stopped by a Woodland Hills corral to feed her pets—six Arabian horses that she fawned over like children.

It was her daily ritual to care for the horses she loved, and residents near the stables on a cul-de-sac on Collins Street knew the sight of Kanan and her old Chevy well.

But on that Tuesday afternoon—Jan. 29, 1985—a killer also knew Kanan’s routine well. When she got out of her car, a masked gunman stepped forward and shot her four times. She died on the sidewalk next to the corral.

One of the detectives originally assigned to the murder, Phil Quartararo, remains on the case. Recently, as he looked through one of the thick files he has filled with investigative reports over the years, he offered a quick summary of the case.

“I don’t have any idea who killed Judy Kanan,” he said.

That is how things stand with the murder that gripped public attention for weeks after it occurred. It is now largely forgotten—except by those who knew Judy Kanan well or have the responsibility of looking for her killer.

The case remains a puzzle for Los Angeles police and a source of bitter frustration for those who wait for justice for Kanan.

“We don’t want what happened to be forgotten,” the victim’s niece and family spokeswoman, Patty Kanan, said last week. “If people don’t remember it, it will go away. We don’t want that because we want to catch this person.

“The killer is still out there. That’s the frightening part. Anyone who would kill an old woman would kill anybody. That should scare everybody, not just us.”

Judy Kanan was a descendant of the Waring family, which settled Agoura in the 1860s. By the 1980s, Kanan and her older sister, Patricia Kanan, had parlayed inheritances and acquisitions into landholdings in Agoura worth millions of dollars. Kanan Road, which runs north-south through Agoura, was named for the family.

The sisters lived together in Hollywood and at the time of the murder owned and operated Kanan Village Shopping Center—the centerpiece of the family’s holdings—in Agoura. In the shopping center, the sisters also operated a small restaurant specializing in roast rabbit and chicken.

Judy Kanan was an enigma. Of the two sisters she was the one on the front line of their business deals. She forged a reputation as a tough-minded, aggressive businesswoman who often took disputes to court—once she even settled a business argument on the syndicated
People’s Court
television show. At the shopping center, she was known to tenaciously press workers to finish projects or tenants to pay rent.

Yet friends and other business associates described her as kind and fiercely loyal. Despite her family’s wealth, she worked many hours each day at the shopping center and restaurant. She drove a 13-year-old car and lived modestly. And she took time out each afternoon to drive from the shopping center to Woodland Hills to feed and care for her horses.

But police said it was her tough business style and litigious image that left her with many enemies and perhaps provided a motive for her slaying. After she was killed, one Agoura businessman said, “You’re going to have half the population of Agoura as suspects.”

Quartararo said the killing was carefully planned and executed. The killer knew her routine and knew she would be alone when she fed her horses each afternoon.

“Whoever it was, he chose the one time Judy and my mother were separated,” Patty Kanan said. “It was the only place he could get to her.”

The man who gunned Kanan down was wearing a raincoat and had a mask or hood to disguise himself, according to a lone witness to the slaying. The car in which he fled had been stolen from a car dealer’s lot. Twenty minutes after the killing it was parked near Ventura Boulevard and set on fire. That obliterated any evidence and helped cover the killer’s trail.

The killing had many of the earmarks of a professional assassination but police still can’t say for sure that it was.

“There was almost no physical evidence for us to work with,” Quartararo said.

Detectives investigated Kanan’s business deals and disputes. They examined each lawsuit, every complaint Kanan had made to friends or authorities and interviewed dozens of people.

In the weeks after the slaying two men emerged as “prime” suspects because of disputes they had had with Kanan, Quartararo said.

The first man had argued with Kanan at the shopping center a week before the killing. The dispute centered on the man’s desire to rent space in the shopping center for a stereo equipment store. The two quarreled over the rent and then Kanan refused to rent to the man at all.

During the following weekend Kanan received several threatening phone calls from an unidentified woman. The following Tuesday she was killed.

After police publicized a composite drawing of the unidentified man, he came forward with an attorney but refused to answer questions about the slaying. His identity was not released.

Detectives determined that the man’s girlfriend had made the threatening phone calls to Kanan and a warrant was obtained to search the man’s home. But no evidence was found connecting the man to the murder, Quartararo said. He was not arrested.

The second man, whom police also declined to identify, had been accused by Kanan several weeks before the slaying of stealing building supplies from the shopping center. Quartararo said the man was arrested in the theft but denied stealing anything. A week before the killing, authorities dropped charges against him.

Quartararo said detectives believed that the second suspect might have held a grudge against Kanan. A warrant was obtained from a judge and the man’s home was searched, but again there was no evidence linked to Kanan’s death and no arrest was made.

Both search warrants remain under court seal, and other details of the investigation of the two men were unavailable. Quartararo said no evidence was found linking the men to the slaying, but neither has been eliminated as a suspect.

Quartararo, who routinely handles other murder cases in the west San Fernando Valley, said it has been three years since a new lead has come in on the Kanan case. He believes it will take more than detective work to break the case.

“If we don’t have anybody come forward with some information, we aren’t going to solve this one,” Quartararo said.

That the case remains unsolved is frustrating to Kanan’s family. Patricia Kanan, now in her late 70s, sold the restaurant she operated with her sister. Because of ill health, she turned management of the shopping center over to her daughter, Patty.

The older Kanan declined to comment on the case.

“Frustration is the word for what we feel,” Patty Kanan said. “And we feel sadness. We really want to know who did this.”

Patricia Kanan, who is unmarried, moved last year from the home she had shared with her sister and now lives with her daughter in an undisclosed location. Though the Kanans do not live in fear of the killer, they anxiously wait for justice.

“My mother and our family have the basic concern that someone out there has killed someone and believes they have gotten away with it,” Patty Kanan said. “It could be anybody. It was a chilling and very calculated act. And that person is still out there. I hate the thought of someone getting away with murder.”

NEPHEW IDENTIFIED AS SOLE SUSPECT IN KANAN KILLING

September 29, 1990

Nearly six years after Judy Kanan, a strong-willed businesswoman and descendant of a pioneer family, was shot to death at a Woodland Hills horse stable, the investigation of the unsolved slaying has narrowed to one person—her nephew, according to police and court documents.

A search warrant filed this month in Van Nuys Municipal Court identifies 34-year-old Michael Kanan, the son of the victim’s brother, as the killer.

After the slaying, according to the court document, the suspect told an acquaintance who later became a police informant: “It’s a real trip to see something you’re responsible for. . . . The bitch got what she deserved.”

Los Angeles police say they are seeking additional evidence before asking the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to file murder charges against Michael Kanan, who is in jail on an unrelated burglary charge.

The suspect, through his attorney, denied having any part in the slaying.

Judy Kanan, 68, was shot four times by a masked gunman in a raincoat on Jan. 29, 1985, as she followed her daily routine and arrived at a stable at the end of a cul-de-sac on Collins Street. She was there to feed six Arabian horses she owned. The killer gunned her down on the sidewalk and escaped in a stolen car that was later abandoned and set on fire.

Police said little evidence was left behind at the shooting scene. And while the investigation stalled, the mystery of who killed Judy Kanan deepened.

The victim was a descendant of the Waring family, which settled Agoura in the 1860s. By the 1980s, Judy Kanan and her older sister, Patricia Kanan, had parlayed inheritances and acquisitions into landholdings in Agoura worth millions of dollars.

When she was gunned down, police acknowledged there was no shortage of potential suspects and concentrated largely on reviewing her business disputes. The killing prompted one Agoura businessman who was interviewed at the time to say: “You’re going to have half the population of Agoura as suspects. The most hated woman in Agoura got assassinated.”

In January of this year, as the fifth anniversary of the killing approached, police said they still were no closer to solving the mystery. “I don’t have any idea who killed Judy Kanan,” Detective Phil Quartararo said at the time.

Court records and police, however, reveal that investigators now believe the slaying was carried out by Michael Kanan and motivated by a financial dispute within the family.

Shortly after the fifth anniversary of Judy Kanan’s death, a person who knows Michael Kanan came forward with details about the slaying. That person said he had been asked by the suspect to kill Judy Kanan.

According to court records, the informant told police the slaying centered on a dispute between Judy Kanan and her brother, George Richard Kanan—Michael Kanan’s father—over a $2,600 loan. Coupled with that was the belief George Kanan impressed upon his son that Judy Kanan had unfairly controlled most of the family’s land, the informant said.

“The informant indicated that George Richard Kanan hated his sister and preached this hatred to his son, Michael . . . ,” the search warrant reads in part. “George Kanan had preached to his son that Judy Kanan had stolen all of his property.”

According to the court records, the informant said the slaying unfolded this way:

In 1984, George Kanan signed an agreement to borrow $2,600 from his sister for unknown reasons. But by the end of the year, he believed he was going to default on the loan and thereby lose a large piece of property he owned in Agoura to her.

“The informant stated that George Kanan was extremely upset Judy Kanan made him sign the agreement,” according to the search warrant.

“Shortly after the loan was made, Michael Kanan approached the informant with a plan to kill Judy Kanan. . . . Michael Kanan had originally planned to kill both Judy and her sister, Pat, at their Agoura restaurant and had planned to make it look like a robbery. The plan was later changed to kill only Judy and it was to be done at the corrals where she went daily to feed her horses,” the warrant stated.

The informant said that a few weeks before the killing, Michael Kanan showed him a handgun that would be used to kill Judy Kanan. Police and the informant believe the gun was stolen during a burglary of a car parked near Balboa Park in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. But neither the gun nor its owner has been found.

The informant told police that in mid-January 1985 he stole a car and parked it near the stable where Judy Kanan’s horses were kept. The car was to be used as a getaway car after the killing, but the car was noticed by police Jan. 25 and impounded.

The informant said he believed the plan would not go any further, but four days later he said he was shocked when he saw a news report on television about the slaying of Judy Kanan.

“. . . it was done in the same manner as previously planned,” the search warrant reads. “Shortly after watching the newscast, the informant confronted Michael Kanan, who admitted to him that he had committed the murder. . . . The informant believes that Michael Kanan committed the murder because he sensed that the informant would not be able to go through with the plan.”

Quartararo, who has been assigned to the case since its start, said Michael Kanan was questioned along with other family members in the early stages of the case, but “we never narrowed in on him.”

About a year after the slaying, Michael Kanan became a fugitive when he jumped bail after his arrest for a commercial burglary in Van Nuys, police said. He wasn’t arrested until last month in Burbank and now is being held in the county jail without bail.

William H. Schultz, an attorney representing Michael Kanan, denied that his client had any involvement in the Kanan slaying.

“The charges are groundless and illogical,” Schultz said. He declined further comment.

George Richard Kanan could not be located for comment.

Police are confident of the informant’s story because he has furnished details about the crime that were never made public. They declined to identify him as a safety precaution.

Acting on the informant’s story, police earlier this month searched a rental storage unit in Chatsworth used by Michael Kanan. A raincoat and gloves were found, but detectives did not find the gun.