Crime Beat (23 page)

On Feb. 26, 1987, Davie Police got a call about a possible burglary in process. Officers went to the home and saw an open window, and a screen leaning against the outside wall. The screen was the giveaway. A few minutes later the cops entered the house and found a burglar hiding in a bathroom shower stall. He said his name was William Burns.

As the Davie officers were booking the burglar into the county jail, a sheriff’s deputy booking his own prisoner looked over at Burns and recognized him as the man on the wanted fliers Detective Cloud had been circulating for almost a year.

“You’re not William Burns,” the deputy said, and the long crime spree of Billy Schroeder was over.

T
HE COPS
who wanted to speak to Schroeder had to take turns. It took two days for the elusive burglar to come out of his cocaine intoxication and figure out he was in jail, but when he did, he considered his lot—the fingerprints, the evidence, his past record—and simply said, “Let’s go. I want it behind me.”

Schroeder sat handcuffed and shackled in the backseats of several detectives’ cars as they drove through neighborhoods of South Florida. It took him three weeks to go over the territory, pointing out the houses he remembered being in. The detectives matched Schroeder’s recollections against their own burglary reports. All told, Cloud says they cleared close to 350 burglaries. And there are perhaps dozens of others Schroeder can’t remember.

Of the millions of dollars in property that Schroeder stole, nothing was recovered. “It’s gone forever,” Cloud says.

Schroeder was charged with 13 burglaries. (It would take years to prosecute him if he were charged in all his burglaries.) On May 21, he tearfully pleaded guilty to the charges in a plea agreement that could leave him facing as many as 20 years in prison.

“I want to get this behind me,” he told the judge. “I have to look to the future.”

While waiting for that future, he has been kept in the east wing of the North Broward Detention Complex, home to all inmates undergoing drug counseling and detoxification. Schroeder takes part in the jail’s “New Life” programs, works in the laundry and volunteers to speak to visiting groups of teenagers about the dangers of drugs.

He seems resigned to a lengthy stint in prison. And he seems genuinely repentant. Still, he can only gain by this contrition and therefore his sincerity is open to question.

But he cries when he talks about the time more than a year ago that he smoked that first rock. And he cries when he talks about the families he stole from. He says maybe someday he will make restitution, a possibility that is, in reality, laughable.

“I just want to do something,” he says. “I think about all the families I robbed and I know I’ve got to do something for them.”

Like many a jail inmate, Schroeder says he has got Jesus with him now. He tries to keep his sleeve over the “Get High” tattoo and regrets the day he got it. He says he wants another chance. That’s the bottom line: another chance. But deep down, he knows it might be too late for Billy Schroeder.

“I’m hoping to someday get another shot at society,” he says. “I don’t want to be thrown completely away.”

Billy Schroeder turned his back on society but now hopes it won’t do the same to him. He seeks sympathy for the devil, so to speak. But it is hard to come by.

“I like Billy Schroeder,” says Detective Bill Cloud. “But I have no sympathy for him. I have sympathy for the people he stole from. They have to put up with the feelings of intrusion and their losses for the rest of their lives. They worked all their lives so they can have some of these possessions, and somebody breaks in and it’s all gone.”

Those sentiments are echoed like the clanging of a jail door: “He was destroying people with what he did,” Detective Dermot Mangan says. “He has got to pay something for that.”

“It’s sad,” says burglary victim Gladys Jones. “Sure the kid needs help. But the people he hurt also need something. When I think of what I’ve been through and that I’m only one of the hundreds of people he did this to, I still feel very angry and hurt.”

Lawyer Norman Elliott Kent, who was appointed to defend Schroeder after he confessed to his crimes, declines to use pat arguments like drugs made Schroeder do it, he’s a product of his environment, he deserves a break and so on. Much of that is valid, but somewhere along the line Billy Schroeder made a choice. There is responsibility somewhere.

“Billy was a drug addict and drug money burns quickly,” Kent says. “And for all that he managed to steal, there is nothing left but hurt victims and a troubled defendant. All Billy has to show for it is his empty pockets, his drug addiction and a jail term. If there is a lesson in all of this, that is it: to let people know what can happen. His message is that in the end everybody loses.”

I
T’S MORNING
in the east wing and a small group of high school students are gathered in the multi-purpose room for a tour of the jail. With all the banging of the heavy doors, sharp clacking of electronic locks and echoes bouncing off the steel and concrete, the students have to lean forward to hear the speaker.

The speaker is an inmate here, a young man with a prematurely aged face. He is here to tell them that he is a loser who found out how to win, how to make it the right way too late. Don’t be like me, he wants to tell them.

“Hello, my name is Bill,” he begins. “And I’m a drug abuser.

“I started doing drugs when I was 11 years old. And pretty soon after that I started going through people’s windows. I hurt a lot of people. And here I am. . . .”

LYING IN WAIT

AMBUSH SHOOTING

Nurse killed trying to aid man on street.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

February 23, 1989

A
PRIVATE NURSE
who stopped her car in the hills above Studio City and apparently got out to help a man lying in the street was fatally shot Wednesday when the man stood up and pulled a gun, Los Angeles police said.

No arrest was made in the ambush killing of 40-year-old Lucille Marie Warren at Montcalm Avenue and Woodrow Wilson Drive in an exclusive neighborhood of hillside homes.

Warren was shot at 6:45 a.m. while on her way home to Inglewood, police said. She had left a house on Montcalm where she worked as a night nurse.

Investigators said there were indications that she was the specific target of the fatal attack and may even have known her killer. Detectives are investigating whether Warren, who was divorced and lived with her two teen-age children, was involved in any personal disputes that could have led to the shooting.

“This doesn’t appear to be a random encounter,” said homicide Detective Mike Coffey.

Motive Unknown

While the motive for the shooting was unknown, police said, the killer may have been in the street because he knew that Warren was approaching and would stop if she thought someone needed help.

“She was a nurse,” said Lt. Ron LaRue. “If you knew she was a nurse, you could find a way to make her stop. The suspect was lying in the street and she stopped.”

Warren had been working at the home in the Montcalm cul-de-sac at least two months, police said. Officials of a Van Nuys-based registry of nurses, through which police said Warren was referred to jobs, declined to comment.

Detectives would not name the person for whom Warren worked. Los Angeles real estate records list the large, gated property where police said she cared for a patient as belonging to Miklos Rozsa, 81, a composer and three-time Academy Award winner for the musical scoring of films.

After finishing her night’s work, Warren was leaving the cul-de-sac when she stopped at Woodrow Wilson Drive after seeing the man in the middle of the street, police said.

Gun Pulled from Clothing

When Warren got out and walked toward the front of the car, the man stood up and pulled a handgun out of his clothing. Police said they do not know whether the pair spoke before the man fired several times at Warren.

Warren was hit by gunfire at least twice, including once in the head, and fell mortally wounded in the street, police said. One other shot hit the windshield of her car, which eventually rolled into an embankment on the other side of the street. Police said the gunman ran to a car parked nearby and sped away. The victim was not robbed.

A resident called police on a car phone after seeing the woman in the street. Coffey said several residents saw parts of the crime and provided police with descriptions of the gunman, his car and the sequence of events.

Warren was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where she died at 10:48 a.m., police said.

As police cordoned off the area, residents gathered nearby or watched from their windows. Police said the shooting, which occurred near a corner house owned by artist David Hockney, was unusual in the quiet, affluent neighborhood.

“Violence is getting common all over the city,” said a man who declined to give his name. “People pay a lot of money to get away from it but it doesn’t always work.”

Times
staff writer Amy Pyle contributed to this story.

NOTE:
Lucille Warren’s former boyfriend was arrested, tried and convicted of murdering her. A former probation officer, he was sentenced to 27 years in prison. Of note in the sentencing was that the killer avoided the death penalty because the judge in the case ruled that he had not been lying in wait, a special circumstance that would have made him eligible for the death penalty. The judge ruled that the lying in wait statute was drawn in regard to killers who hide and then surprise their victims. Since the killer was lying on the street in plain sight when Warren approached he was not hiding and was therefore not lying in wait.

TRUNK MUSIC

WHO SHOT VIC WEISS?

A trail gone cold.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

June 11, 1989

T
HE MEETING WITH
Jack Kent Cooke and Jerry Buss had gone well. Vic Weiss was close to a deal that would bring University of Nevada, Las Vegas, basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian to Los Angeles to lead the Lakers, the team Cooke was selling to Buss.

Briefcase in hand, the stocky but energetic Weiss, a 51-year-old sports promoter, sometime agent and businessman, left the meeting room at a Beverly Hills hotel, hopped into his Rolls-Royce and headed over the hill to his house in Encino.

But Weiss never made it home. Three days later, on June 17, 1979, his red-and-white Rolls-Royce was spotted in the garage of a North Hollywood hotel.

People opened the trunk and there was the body of Victor J. Weiss, hands tied behind his back. He had been killed with two gunshots to the head.

Organized Crime Link

Ten years later, Weiss’ killing remains unsolved and one of the San Fernando Valley’s most puzzling mysteries. Los Angeles police believe Weiss was the victim of an organized crime hit, the most difficult of murder cases to crack.

It is a case that plunged detectives into the milieu of mobsters and informants, where they became suspicious of everyone, sometimes even fellow cops. And once they even found themselves being followed by someone they were investigating.

Still, they were able to learn much about the secret life of Vic Weiss. They learned that while he publicly hobnobbed with legitimate names in sports and business, he privately rubbed shoulders with criminals, ran up huge debts on sports betting and skimmed off the top of laundered money he delivered to mobsters in Las Vegas.

It is believed by police that those latter indiscretions cost Weiss his life. But who ordered the killing and who carried it out remain unknown.

Detective Leroy Orozco, the only original investigator still assigned to the killing, says that after 21 years as a homicide detective, the Weiss case tantalizes him most. He has followed leads across the country but never made an arrest. He has carefully investigated and traced potential suspects, only to learn that, apparently by grim coincidence, they too had been killed.

Orozco has two file drawers filled with reports, notes and evidence on the case to show for a decade of investigation. But even after 10 years, he doesn’t need to open the boxes to recall the details. He can even recall what he was doing—driving his family to an ice cream parlor after a Father’s Day dinner—when his electronic pager beeped and he was called to the parking garage in North Hollywood.

“This case has been my biggest challenge,” Orozco said. “It won’t lie down and die.

“You get a case like this maybe once in a lifetime. How often do you read about a Mafia hit, especially in L.A., with the intrigue of Vegas and the cops being followed by the bad guys? But I knew from the beginning it would be tough. As soon as I walked into that garage and saw that Rolls, I knew I was in deep.”

In life, Vic Weiss presented the image of success. Raised in the Pasadena area—where he went to high school with longtime friend Tarkanian—Weiss first became successful in real estate and insurance ventures and was later known as a part owner in Ford and Rolls-Royce dealerships in Van Nuys. His red-and-white Rolls had a gold interior. He wore a diamond ring and a Rolex watch. He was known as a guy who always picked up the tab after dinner or drinks with friends and business associates.

Sports Negotiations a Hobby

Weiss became prominent in sports circles beginning in 1973 when he bought the contract of welterweight boxing contender Armando Muniz. Though not a professional sports agent, Weiss handled contract negotiations for his friend Tarkanian as a hobby. It was that hobby that brought him to the negotiating table with Cooke and Buss at the Beverly Comstock Hotel on June 14, 1979.

According to police accounts of the meeting, details of the agreement to bring Tarkanian to the Lakers were written by Weiss and Cooke on a piece of paper that Weiss dropped into his briefcase when he left.

“He was probably confident as he left,” Orozco says. “Negotiations went well.”

Weiss was to go to dinner with his wife, Rose, but first, police say, he planned to call Tarkanian, who was waiting at a Long Beach hotel for word on the negotiations. Tarkanian never got the call, and the talks would never go further. The Lakers eventually hired another coach.

Weiss was reported missing by his wife, but there was no sign of him until four days later when a security guard spotted his Rolls in the garage of the Sheraton Universal hotel. After Weiss’ decomposed body was discovered and removed, detectives found no clues to what had happened.

Weiss’ wallet and briefcase were gone, but his diamond ring and watch had not been taken. That led police to rule out robbery as a motive. Cooke, Buss and Tarkanian were quickly eliminated as having any involvement. That left police with the mystery.

But the Rolls-Royce, though clean of evidence, generated a lead in the case. Several people who had learned of the slaying in the media called police and said they remembered seeing the distinctive car on the day Weiss disappeared, Orozco says. Through these witnesses, police were able to chart Weiss’ path from Beverly Hills along Beverly Glen Boulevard to Ventura Boulevard and west into Encino.

Mysterious Tall Man

A witness told police that he had seen the Rolls pull to the curb on a street in Encino and a white Cadillac with three men in it stop behind. The witness said Weiss got out of his car and two men—one described as a 6-foot, 6-inch blond—got out of the Cadillac.

The witness said the blond man angrily pointed a finger in Weiss’ face as he spoke to him. After a few moments Weiss got back in his car, the blond man got in the backseat behind him and the third man got in the front. Then the Rolls and the Cadillac drove away.

As detectives delved into Weiss’ background, they became confident that the witness had seen Weiss’ killers. They learned that Weiss maintained a lifestyle that belied his true financial worth. They learned that many of his associates were involved in organized crime.

Orozco says that Weiss had no financial interest in the car dealerships he reportedly owned; he was merely a paid consultant or promotions man. An associate owned the house where he lived in Encino, and his Rolls-Royce was leased.

“When he died, he had some insurance; that was about it,” Orozco says.

Police also began receiving reports from anonymous callers, organized crime informants and Las Vegas law enforcement officers that Weiss was involved with mobsters in Nevada and Florida. The informants said Weiss had run up gambling debts.

Mob-Style Hit

The information convinced police that Weiss had been kidnapped by the three men in the Cadillac and executed in a mob-style hit.

Orozco says he and his partner, John Helvin, traced one of Weiss’ close friends to central Florida, where he had moved immediately after the killing and worked as a car salesman. In exchange for his anonymity, the salesman told the detectives that he knew that Weiss had run up more than $60,000 in gambling debts in Las Vegas. To make good on the debts, he had begun flying to Las Vegas and delivering packages of cash laundered in Los Angeles, Orozco says.

Each week, the money came in a brown paper package and was placed in the trunk of Weiss’ Rolls-Royce, the salesman said. Weiss would then fly to Las Vegas and back on the same day. But, the salesman said, Weiss was skimming—stealing money from the deliveries—and had been caught and warned to stop.

Orozco says detectives theorized that Weiss had not heeded the warning and was killed. They began tracking the phone records of Weiss and some of his associates. They documented connections to organized crime figures and went to Las Vegas and New Port Richey, Fla., to serve search warrants on the homes of people believed associated with the killing.

Search Fails

In Las Vegas, the detectives got a search warrant from local authorities, but the house they planned to search was empty on the morning they arrived. Orozco speculated that the suspect had been tipped off and moved out.

In New Port Richey, things also went poorly.

Orozco and Helvin arrived late one afternoon and drove by the house, which they planned to search the next day after obtaining a warrant from local authorities. The house belonged to a man suspected of being an “enforcer” with an organized crime family, Orozco says. The detectives noticed a boat in the canal out back and a black Camaro parked in front, indicating that the occupants had not been tipped to the search and were still living there.

The next morning, Orozco says, he glanced out the window of his motel room and saw the same black Camaro in a parking lot across a canal next to the motel. A man was sitting behind the wheel of the car, watching the motel.

“We flipped a coin to see who’d go out the door first,” Orozco says.

Helvin lost. They drew their weapons and with Orozco covering, Helvin quickly went down to the lobby. Orozco followed, but by the time they got into a rental car, the black Camaro was gone.

Orozco says he and his partner were turned down for the search warrant because they did not have enough evidence that the suspected enforcer had been involved in the Weiss killing.

Orozco says he was paranoid when he returned to Los Angeles.

Not knowing how information about their movements had gotten to the targets of the investigation, he and Helvin stopped talking about the case to some officers inside and outside the department. Orozco says that when a retired Los Angeles detective inquired about the case, he gave the man false information. A few days later, Orozco says, an organized crime informant called with the same wrong information.

“We didn’t talk to anyone after that,” Orozco says. “We just came in, did our work and went home. If I went out of town on the case, I only told my lieutenant.”

Orozco and Helvin continued to work full-time on the Weiss killing for two years. At least three men they investigated would become the victims of apparently unrelated slayings.

Jewel Thief

One of them was Jeffrey Rockman, whose name was found on a piece of paper in Weiss’ office. Police learned that Rockman, 33, was a jewel thief who worked for a Canadian organized crime syndicate and was believed to have sold stolen property to Weiss.

But police did not find Rockman in time to question him about the killing. On April 29, 1980, he was shot to death in his Marina del Rey town house. Orozco says detectives learned that Rockman’s real name was Anthony Starr and that he had been given the new identity after entering the federal witness protection program when he testified in a Detroit bank robbery case. Police believe his killing was unrelated to the Weiss case.

Ronald Launius was another thief, and a drug dealer, who police learned had associated with Weiss. Though he was investigated, there was never any evidence to connect him to the slaying.

On July 1, 1981, Launius, 37, was one of four people beaten to death in a Laurel Canyon drug den. A former Hollywood nightclub owner and his bodyguard were charged last year with killing the victims in revenge for a robbery.

Orozco says Launius earlier had been associated with Horace McKenna, a former California Highway Patrol officer who operated a string of bars featuring nude dancers. McKenna was believed by police to have ties to prostitution, counterfeiting, narcotics and gambling in the Los Angeles area.

Investigators in the Weiss case attempted to learn whether McKenna was connected to the Weiss killing but never were able to establish that the two men knew each other. McKenna was killed March 9 at the gate of his Orange County estate when a gunman fired a machine gun into the back of the limousine in which he was riding. The slaying remains unsolved.

Through the years, names contained in Weiss case files have often come up in unrelated cases, Orozco says. But detectives have never put a name on the tall blond man. Although a mob informant once told police that the men who killed Weiss were themselves killed to maintain organized crime’s veil of silence, Orozco believes the killers may still be alive and free.

Helvin has retired and Orozco handles other cases. But he still gets calls from informants offering street information on the Weiss killing. And sometimes he hears from law officers who have heard of the case in the course of other investigations.

“In other unsolved cases you usually hit the wall, where you’ve exhausted your investigation and you put it away,” he says. “This one isn’t like that. You can put it away but it keeps coming back.”

Orozco occasionally drives the same route Vic Weiss took on his last ride. He is waiting for the piece of data that will lead to an arrest, or the name of the blond man.

“Somebody will have to get jammed up, arrested on something else, and want to give us some help,” he says wistfully.

NOTE:
The Vic Weiss murder case remains unsolved.