Insufficient Evidence : Man Held in Slaying Let Go for 2nd Time

An 18-year-old transient who was accused of killing a Los Angeles police officer’s wife in Fullerton was freed Wednesday after charges were dismissed for the second time.

Scott Michael Katzin, whose family lives in Pomona, was released from Orange County Jail shortly after North Municipal Court Judge Robert B. Hutson told prosecutors that they had failed to present enough evidence to hold Katzin for trial.

On July 28, North Municipal Judge Daniel T. Brice dismissed the charges against Katzin, but prosecutors refiled them before Katzin could be released.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Ed Freeman said in court Wednesday that he would ask for a Superior Court review of Hutson’s decision. But Superior Court judges almost always uphold Municipal Court rulings, because a serious procedural violation must occur for a decision to be overturned.

Katzin, who was released on his own recognizance, also has been ordered to appear Tuesday before the Orange County Grand Jury, which is conducting its own investigation of the woman’s death.

Katzin’s attorney, Ronald Kreber, said outside the courtroom Wednesday that “there’s still a long way to go in this thing.”

Katzin was arrested two weeks after the April 22 disappearance of Maria Andrea Malmgreen, a 38-year-old mother of two from Brea whose husband, Russell, is a judicial liaison officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Mrs. Malmgreen’s body was found April 29 in the back seat of her abandoned car. She had been robbed and sexually assaulted.

Katzin was living at Craig Park in Fullerton, which is where police believe Mrs. Malmgreen may have been attacked. When a park ranger approached Katzin on May 5 and asked if he had seen anything suspicious the day of the woman’s disappearance, Katzin admitted that he knew something about it.

During the next two days, Katzin identified Mrs. Malmgreen from a picture that police showed him and said she was the woman he had seen sexually assaulted and beaten in the park the morning of April 22. Although Katzin denied participating in the crime, Fullerton police arrested him.

Also arrested was David Scott Pickering, a 21-year-old Brea resident. A witness told police that Pickering might have been with Katzin the night before the woman’s disappearance.

However, prosecutors dismissed the case against Pickering on July 11, admitting that they had no evidence to connect him with the death.

When he dismissed the case, Brice said he believed that Katzin may have “fantasized” about seeing an attack.

Hutson gave no opinion except to say that he considered the evidence against Katzin “insufficient.”

At both preliminary hearings, Freeman produced evidence from a jail informant who said that Katzin told him when they were cell mates that he had been a lookout for friends who attacked the Brea woman. His job, the informant said Katzin told him, was to keep an eye out for the police.

Freeman also argued that a box boy at a nearby Albertson’s supermarket, where police believe Mrs. Malmgreen was abducted, had seen Katzin hanging around there several times.

Kreber pointed out to the court that Katzin’s description of the woman he saw in the park bore so little resemblance to Mrs. Malmgreen that it could not be believed. Also, hair samplings found on Mrs. Malmgreen did not match Katzin’s, according to the prosecution evidence.

Katzin’s mother, Diane Ferguson, left the courtroom excited at the prospect of her son’s release. She said she has been convinced from the beginning that her son could not be involved in killing Mrs. Malmgreen.

Katzin’s mother said that he left home in April and that she did not know if he would be returning home. But “he’s always welcome there.”