Hitmen (16 page)

Julie Cheema was delighted when doctors told her that her husband could go home on 3 October 1990 – six weeks after that shotgun attack in the off-licence. As she drove him back through west London she felt a twinge of nervous excitement building up inside. She kept telling him how glad she was that he’d been released from hospital. How relieved she was that he’d decided to hire minders. Mohinder Cheema looked at
his wife in admiration. She really was bearing up to all the stresses and strains very well.

The journey back home took about 45 minutes, but Mohinder Cheema insisted on taking a look around his
off-licence
before going upstairs to their flat to recuperate. As he walked around the shelves, still in his dressing gown and slippers, inspecting the stock, she knew what a boring, mean old man he was. He didn’t even trust her enough to let her carry on running the business without interfering. He wanted to know why they were short of stocks of certain brands of wine. She answered him sweetly because she knew that it wouldn’t be long now.

Then Julie turned and saw the familiar figure of Robert Naughton approaching the shop. She walked round behind the counter and waited impatiently. Come on. Come on. Let’s just get it over and done with.

Just like before, Mohinder Cheema didn’t notice Naughton until it was too late. This time, he turned towards the gunman and looked over at his wife standing silently nearby. Mohinder Cheema knew at that moment she was behind it. The nervous expression on her lips gave it all away.

Robert Naughton blasted both shots close to his head this time. He couldn’t fail. The shots hit Mohinder in the back of the head and the neck. There was no way he could survive them this time. The moment his body crashed to the floor of that off-licence he was already well on his way to being dead. Mohinder Cheema’s 20-year-old son Sunil – who’d just walked into the shop – only realised what was happening when it was too late. If he’d been a few moments earlier he would have seen that look on his stepmother’s face.

As Sunil rushed next door to a neighbour to raise the alarm, Julie Cheema leaned down and looked over her husband’s body for the second time in less than two months. This time he was dead. A warm smile came to her lips and she stood up and walked towards the front of the shop, trying hard to force a sob and a tear to well up in her eyes. Mohinder Cheema lay in a pool of his own blood still wearing the Charing Cross Hospital dressing-gown he’d had on when he arrived at the shop just a few minutes earlier.

Julie Cheema was found guilty of murder and attempted murder when she appeared in front of a jury at the Old Bailey in July 1991. Her lover, Neil Marklew, and his friend Robert Naughton admitted murder and attempted murder. All three were given life sentences.

Detectives admitted that if it had not been for the testimony of Neil Marklew, Julie Cheema might never have been arrested. Her son Kismat, aged 18, was given three months’ youth custody for conspiring to murder Mohinder Cheema.

S
anta Barbara, California, is a picturesque beachside paradise: miles and miles of pure white sand overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Even the pavements and streets are kept pristinely clean by a city council that insists on nothing but the best.

But just two hours’ drive south of the city is the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles with all its well-publicised problems. Local police in Santa Barbara are always on the look-out for troublemakers entering their little piece of heaven-by-the-sea. Yet behind its family-orientated image and wholesome exterior lies a seedy underbelly, typical of any seaside community from Brighton to Benidorm.

And, according to many locals, one of the most ‘distasteful’ elements that attracts the wrong sort of people is the notorious El Capitan beach just outside the city boundaries. This is where the home values and straight-laced beliefs of so
much of Middle America give way to sleaze. In a nation where bare breasts are censored on prime-time television yet mass killings by gun-wielding teenagers are not uncommon. The El Capitan beach is a place that people refer to in hushed tones – it is, you see, a good, old-fashioned nudist beach.

Lots of nature lovers saunter down to the isolated beauty spot and strip off in a bid for the ultimate all-over tan. And, significantly, the majority of visitors to El Capitan are middle-aged citizens. The younger generation has always avoided the place like the plague. Many of them are appalled and disgusted by the middle-aged paunches and roasting flesh that have become a part of everyday life on El Capitan Beach. But then more than 70 per cent of America’s population still goes to church every Sunday so perhaps it’s not so surprising.

Phillip Bogdanoff and his pretty wife Diana were two such avid sun-worshippers. They loved making the short trip from their mobile home at the El Capitan Ranch Park right across the street to the beach. It was a dream come true for Phillip who had a healthy – some would say unhealthy – interest in examining the figures of nude beachgoers. His idea of a nice day out was to cast his gaze across the perfectly formed muscles and firm thighs of some of the beach’s other regular visitors.

But then handsome, rugged, fun-loving 49-year-old engineer Bogdanoff kept himself in pretty good shape as well. He was proud of his own six-pack and relished the chance to strip off to his birthday suit on El Capitan beach. He’d already been a regular for many years when he started
romancing an attractive fair-haired lady called Diana from nearby Colefax, California. Diana was working as a nursing aide at a nearby convalescence hospital when they first met in 1984. Both had suffered broken marriages, so they were understandably cautious at first and a four-year courtship followed. Diana already had children from her previous marriage, so there was no hurry to tie the knot.

In February 1989, Phillip and Diana married and moved to their dream location right opposite the most infamous nudist beach in Santa Barbara. So whenever they weren’t working during that summer, Diana and Phillip would each pack a towel and set off across the street to the El Capitan Beach.

Diana told Phillip from the start of their relationship that said she didn’t mind stripping off on the beach. He even suspected she enjoyed exhibiting her shapely body to the – mostly male – beach population. Phillip often caught healthily endowed guys staring at his wife’s pert body. He’d smile at them before they could avert their gaze in embarrassment at being ‘caught’ peeping.

Sometimes Diana got so turned on she’d open her legs just a fraction whenever some of the more handsome
beachcombers
were watching at her eye level. She loved letting them see just a hint. Phillip knew what his wife was doing and even gave her behaviour his own bizarre seal of approval by observing the proceedings and
never
objecting to her behaviour.

But Phillip and Diana’s favourite pastime was frolicking waist-high in the warm Pacific Ocean. Nude swimming was a hell of a refreshing way to pass the time. Diana and Phillip adored that feeling when the foamy surf enveloped them.
They used to say it was second only to making passionate love.

But on El Capitan Beach during those swelteringly hot summer months of 1989, Diana began letting her mind wander to other, less innocent things as she lay sunbathing in the nude. She’d sometimes close her eyes in the bright sunlight and think about the passionate affair she was having with the manager of the El Capitan trailer park across the street.

Diana Bogdanoff loved trailing her tongue down his neck and over his right nipple before biting gently into his soft skin. Then she moved back to his mouth and started probing deeper with her tongue. Running the tip right across his gums before pushing it deep into the full cavity of his mouth. Then she’d open her own mouth as wide as possible so that he could plunge his tongue deep into her throat. And Diana Bogdanoff never once considered her new husband, lying naked on the nudist beach just a few hundred yards away.

She’d first met the handsome stranger a few days earlier when he helped the couple move into their new home. But the moment he caught her looking him up and down they both knew they’d end up in bed together. Diana adored making hot, steamy love with a new rampant, virile man. Naturally, she liked to be on top most of the time. She also loved to tease and tantalise him, getting him really close to climaxing then letting go for a split second. It always made him beg for more.

But the greatest irony of all was that her husband of just a few months was lying on that nearby nudist beach ogling naked bodies, probably in just as excited a state. However Diana Bogdanoff preferred her new, young lover. She was
willing and prepared to do anything to please him. As they lay there hot and sweaty after hours of lovemaking, she sat up and looked through the window to that nudest beach across the street and smiled to herself. Her husband got his pleasure watching naked bodies. She got her pleasure from performing the real thing. She realised her marriage was a sham – something she should never have undertaken in the first place. Now she needed a way out of it.

‘If you wanted to kill someone, how would you do it?’ she asked her secret lover as they nestled into each other’s bodies.

He thought he was hearing things at first. Did she really just ask about killing someone moments after enjoying sex? But Diana Bogdanoff wasn’t finished.

‘Come on. A guy like you must know how to get someone killed.’

Still he didn’t reply. The sex between them may well have been out of this world, but when she started talking about murdering her husband he began to wonder what sort of relationship he’d got himself into.

However Diana Bogdanoff wasn’t deterred by her new lover’s reluctance to respond. Her mind remained fully focused on this particular subject. Killing Phillip would solve a lot of problems, so she carried on.

‘I thought about lacing his food with cocaine. D’you think that might work?’

‘No way. He’d just end up getting high and havin’ a great time.’

‘What about poison? What would be the best brand to use?’

Diana’s lover decided to play along with her ‘game’. She couldn’t possibly be serious. Could she?

‘You wanna try getting some of that poison from those pencil trees that grow out near Morro Bay,’ he said almost lightheartedly.

For the first time, he was starting to encourage her. He stopped in his tracks. Enough is enough. I must be crazy, he thought to himself. But Diana’s mind was already set.

‘Hey, that’s a great idea. Will you come with me and help me find some of those trees?’

Her secret lover shook his head.

‘No way. You must be crazy. Forget it. Get a divorce if you’re so goddam unhappy.’

Diana got out of bed in a sulky silence, put her clothes on and headed out of the one and only door to that trailer. She was furious that he wouldn’t help her. She’d have to find someone else who’d hatch a plan with her to kill her husband. That’s when she decided to turn to her beautiful 18-year-old daughter Stephanie for help.

Diana Bogdanoff told Stephanie that husband Phillip had, ‘beaten me and abused me more than I can handle. I gotta do something.’ She was pretty convincing as a battered wife. The teenager sat, riveted by her mother’s appalling revelations. How could her step-father be such a beast?

‘You gotta help me kill him. It’s the only way,’ said Diana, close to crocodile tears.

‘But Mom. That’s murder you’re talkin’ about. Just get away from him. Just leave him.’

‘But I’ve got nothing. If I leave him, I’ll be out on the streets. If we kill him, at least I’ll get to keep the house and all our money and things.’

‘You’re crazy mom.’

Like any self-respecting daughter, Stephanie was genuinely worried about her mother’s safety at the hands of her supposedly brutal husband, but to murder him seemed rather drastic. Meanwhile Diana Bogdanoff sensed her daughter’s sympathetic attitude. She decided to keep working on her until she had her ‘on side’.

Over the next couple of months, Diana called up her daughter Stephanie at her home, 50 miles away in Bakersfield, and begged her to help her kill her ‘brutal’ husband. Initially she still got a definite ‘No Way’ response. But on the third attempt, Stephanie thought she sensed real panic in her mother’s voice and gave in.

‘I know this isn’t right but if it’s the only way then I guess we’ll have to do it,’ responded Stephanie.

Diana Bogdanoff was delighted. She’d grown to despise Phillip even more over the previous few months. The only time when she felt truly happy was when she closed her eyes and thought about her passionate affairs with other men. So, with daughter Stephanie on board, it was decided that one of her daughter’s long-time admirers, a man called Raymond Stock, should carry out the execution, since he was still besotted with the shapely, long-legged teenager.

Stock had continually told Stephanie: ‘There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you,’ so now he was going to be put to the ultimate test.

It should be pointed out here that Stock’s obsession with Stephanie was sweetened by the promise of $10,000 and part ownership of a house. As Stephanie snuggled up close to Stock on the settee at his home, she playfully stroked his
thigh and said, ‘I promise we’ll be together afterwards and we’re gonna have the time of our lives.’

Within hours the couple had stolen a car and switched its number plates, and were heading out towards Santa Barbara. Stephanie sat really close to Stock as they made the hour-long journey and talked in vivid detail about the plan to murder Phillip Bogdanoff: they’d go to the Bogdanoff mobile home, wait for Phillip to open the door and pump him full of bullets.

But as they approached the outskirts of Santa Barbara, Stock began suffering from an attack of guilty conscience. The idea of blasting Phillip Bogdanoff to death seemed all wrong. His hands started shaking, even though Stephanie was snuggling close to him as they drove. She kissed and licked his ear, neck and cheeks to try and help him relax. But the same thought kept going through Stock’s mind: ‘I’ll go to hell if I do this.’

Just outside Santa Barbara, Stock announced to Stephanie he was pulling out of the hit. She was surprisingly calm and they turned the car around and headed back to Bakersfield in complete silence. When Stock dropped her off at her home, she’d already decided she’d never see him again. She’d have to find some other stupid man to do what he was told.

Just a few days later, Stephanie set out to persuade another of her admirers, Danny Kaplan, a neighbour from Bakersfield. He later recalled that there was something incredibly sexy about the teenager. When she nuzzled up to him and said she needed a favour, he couldn’t resist helping her. Even after she’d explained the task, Kaplan took a huge gulp and decided to do it. He was hooked.

‘I loved her so much I’d have done anything for her,’ Kaplan said later. It was a familiar story. Stephanie had that sort of power over men. Kaplan didn’t even object when Stephanie said her regular boyfriend – 21-year-old Brian Stafford – would be accompanying them on their mission to kill Phillip Bogdanoff. Kaplan still believed he’d be her only true love in the end.

A few days later, both men loaded shotguns and rifles into Kaplan’s car and headed off towards Santa Barbara. This time the plan was to blast Phillip Bogdanoff to death as he drove alongside them on the motorway on his way back home from work. So by the time Kaplan, Stafford and Stephanie had arrived at Bogdanoff’s workplace, all three were totally psyched up for the kill. They found a discreet vantage point overlooking the main entrance to the building and waited for Bogdanoff to come out.

Many hours passed. Then darkness fell and the three accomplices began to realise that maybe he wasn’t at work that day. They got agitated and Kaplan started to question the entire plan for the first time.

‘Let’s call it a day. We’ll have to think up a different way to do this,’ he said nervously to the other two.

But Stephanie had other ideas. As the two men dropped their mini-armoury of weapons back in the boot of the car, she suggested a different way to kill her ‘evil’ stepfather. But Kaplan didn’t want to know.

‘I’m not going through with it. I want out of this,’ he said.

Stephanie and her boyfriend Brian Stafford were angered by Kaplan’s outburst.

‘Hey, come on. You promised. We all agreed.’

Stephanie made it sound more like a playground dare than a mission to murder.

‘No way. I cannot murder an innocent man.’

‘But he’s not innocent. He’s beaten my mom. He deserves to die.’

‘You don’t know that for sure.’

Stephanie failed to dissuade Kaplan. They’d have to go back to the drawing board yet again. But nothing would make Stephanie give up. She ignored all her fears out of a fierce loyalty for her ‘battered’ mother. She believed the right opportunity would come along eventually. And boyfriend Stafford remained as passionate about Stephanie as ever. He’d do anything for her.