Mob-Style Killings Test Mettle of Beverly Hills Police

Not since the murder 42 years ago of Benjamin (Bugsie) Siegel, the infamous gangster and casino owner, has the Beverly Hills Police Department had to grapple with a mob-style assassination.

Siegel’s killers, who gunned him down through a side window of his girlfriend’s mansion on North Linden Drive, got away without a trace.

So, too, did the killers of Hollywood entertainment executive Jose Menendez, 45, and his wife, Kitty, 44, who were blasted with shotguns at close range in their North Elm Drive mansion on the night of Aug. 20.

Before departing, the killers left few, if any, clues, and unlike the Siegel killing, no apparent motive.

For the Beverly Hills Police Department, the Menendez killings represent a test of whether a small law enforcement agency with only two regular homicide detectives can cope with a complex murder case that has all the markings of an organized crime hit.

“We have not developed a suspect,” Lt. Russell Olson, Beverly Hills’ chief of detectives, said in an interview last week. “There’s a lot of investigation that needs to be done, a lot of leads that need to be followed.”

A veteran organized crime investigator, who is not with the Beverly Hills police, said the murders “stink of organized crime. They went in there to take care of business and to make a message clear.”

Said Olson:

“We’re looking at a lot of angles and a lot of leads, and organized crime is one of those angles.”

Menendez, a one-time executive with RCA Records in New York, came to Los Angeles in 1986 to join Carolco Pictures Inc. of West Hollywood, an independent movie company that produced Sylvester Stallone’s “Rambo” movies. Developing a reputation as a hard-working, aggressive executive, Menendez in 1988 become chief executive of Live Entertainment, a newly formed video and music distribution business, 49% of which is owned by Carolco.

Because both Carolco and Live Entertainment have dealt with some companies and individuals allegedly linked to the mob, an organized crime path is an obvious one for investigators to take.

But as one veteran organized crime investigator, who asked not to be named, reflected, “you have to be lucky” to catch contract killers. Professional killers leave cold trails.

A police science professional adds that it helps to have several detectives who can work on such a case full time without distractions.

In the Beverly Hills Police Department there are two detectives, out of 23 under Olson’s command, who specialize in homicides. The department, which has 128 officers, averages two homicide investigations a year, Olson said.

For technical expertise, the department has a crime lab staffed by three technicians. But ballistics work has to be farmed out to the Sheriff’s Department.

Detectives have been put on the Menendez case, Olson said, depending on the number of new leads that have to be checked out on any day.

Indeed, he said, all 23 detectives could be called upon if there were enough important leads to be pursued.

“There are five detectives (on the case) at this very moment” under the direction of Detective Les Zoeller, Olson said Friday.

“In terms of time involved, especially in a mob slaying, it’s staggering for a small department to try to handle a major murder case like this,” said Michael Rustigan, a criminology professor in San Jose State University’s Administration of Justice department.

Small police departments, he said, “often are not fully equipped to intensively pursue homicide cases,” said Rustigan, who directs a monthly seminar in homicide investigations at the San Jose Criminal Justice Training Center, which draws law enforcement personnel from throughout California.

Still, it is the view of Olson and others that a police agency’s size is not necessarily indicative of its ability to solve a complicated crime.

He pointed out that the March 16, 1988, murder of auto racing pioneer Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy, in the driveway of their San Gabriel Valley home, also remains unsolved. The case is under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, more than 50 times larger than the Beverly Hills Police Department.

“I don’t think this is over our heads,” Olson said of the Menendez case. “And we’re not afraid to ask for outside assistance.”

Although Olson would not comment on it, this was a reference to the fact that his detectives, according to knowledgeable sources, have frequently queried the FBI and organized crime experts of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department.

Admittedly, bigness can’t always be translated into effectiveness, said Robert Trojanowicz, a Michigan State University professor and head of the school’s Department of Criminal Justice.

“Smallness, in my opinion, doesn’t determine the ability to solve a crime,” he said. “If the investigator is smart, innovative, perceptive and experienced,” he said, agency size diminishes in importance.

“But,” Trojanowicz added, “organized crime is a phenomenon that is increasingly causing most police departments a problem because you’re dealing full time with very sophisticated individuals who have the money to carry out their complex endeavors.”

Another factor that can work against the Menendez investigators is time. It has been almost a month since the slayings.

“Going past a month, you don’t really have the hot trial,” San Jose State’s Rustigan noted. “The trail is getting cold.”

Olson agrees.

“The longer it goes, obviously the harder it becomes to solve it,” Olson said. “But there are always the exceptions.”

Just what confronts the Beverly Hills detectives in the Menendez investigation can be gleaned from Carolco’s intricate business relationships and operations, which span the globe. About 75% of Carolco, of which Menendez was a corporate director, is owned by a Netherlands holding company controlled by Carolco co-founders--Andrew Vajna, 44, and Mario Kassar, 37, and their families. The holding company, in turn, is owned by entities as far-ranging as Hong Kong, Aruba, and the Isle of Jersey off Great Britain.

Carolco executives have said that the structure is likely to change soon, since the co-owners are negotiating an arrangement under which Kassar may purchase Vajna’s interests.

Like most Hollywood businesses, Carolco and Live were involved in a wide range of business disputes, involving dozens of individuals, none of whom have been identified as a suspect in the slayings.

When Menendez joined Carolco in 1986, the film company bought International Video Entertainment Inc. of Canoga Park, then owned by Noel C. Bloom of Hidden Hills. Bloom had dealt extensively in pornography before his company was sold.

In 1987, Bloom sued Carolco, alleging that the company had improperly tied up his property, which it had used as collateral for $25 million in loans. Carolco then countersued Bloom, alleging violations of the agreement to buy International Video Entertainment.

Last January, Live Entertainment purchased a New England retail music store chain from New York record executive Morris Levy, who, according to law enforcement officials and court records, has been a business associate of Vincent (The Chin) Gigante, the reputed boss of the Genovese crime family.

Beverly Hills detectives have talked with their counterparts in the Los Angeles Police Department who are investigating the Aug. 1 killing of Theodore Snyder, 47, a producer of X-rated videos. There have been reports of some similarities in the slayings of Snyder and Menendez, including the sighting of a white hatchback vehicle near the scene of both slayings.

Snyder’s company, Video Cassette Recordings Inc., did business with and owned money to a firm allegedly controlled by Martin Taccetta, an individual linked by federal prosecutors to the Lucchese crime family, according to court affidavits.

Times staff writers Michael Cieply, Nieson Himmel and John Johnson contributed to this story.

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Correction

Mary Louise (Kitty) Menendez was 47 when she died, not 44.

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