Lost and Found in L.A.

Valerie Kandell will never be convinced it was her son who died in L.A. An incorrect spelling of his name and variations in his description make her believe that someone else’s body was cremated and that Paul is still out there somewhere.

Even fingerprint verification doesn’t convince her, and four years after his death she’s still thinking of hiring private detectives to reopen his case.

“What’s driving her now is not evidence but anguish,” a missing persons expert says. “There’s no cure for that.”

Jobless and homeless, Paul Kandell was 31 when he died March 3, 1987, from an overdose of prescription drugs that he and a transient friend had apparently mixed into a deadly narcoleptic “tea.”

The drugs are also used as animal tranquilizers. The men knew a caretaker at a pet hospital who had allowed them to spend the night because they had no place else to go. They may have gotten the drugs from him.

Sometime the next day, Paul fell unconscious. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Thereafter, he became Coroner’s Case No. 87-2531, humanity reduced to height, weight and a physical description, the body of a well-developed, well-nourished Caucasian male undergoing early decomposition . . .

His friend said the deceased was named Kendall. A clerk somehow translated that to Kendell, and then Kandall. Finally, a fingerprint check was made with the Sheriff’s Department and, because Paul had been arrested before for possession of narcotics, a match was made.

He was Paul Kandell, fingerprint I.D. No. 01203311. Toxicological tests determined the cause of death, and a police investigation listed it as accidental. He’d gone for a cheap high and slipped into oblivion.

Valerie Kandell is retired and lives on a pension near Santa Rosa. She was visiting friends in England when word of Paul’s death reached her. She flew to L.A. and asked to see his body.

Her request was denied. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition and viewing would have served no purpose. Prints had positively identified Paul. What remained wasn’t human.

“Sixty-five thousand people die in Los Angeles County every year,” coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said the other day. “We handle 18,000 of them. In the 33 years I’ve been here, I know of no case where print identification has been wrong. We’ve got to conclude they were right in this one too.”

Paul’s body was subsequently cremated, and all physical remains of his existence vanished from the earth.

It was when she was denied permission to view her son that Valerie Kandell began to believe it couldn’t have been Paul lying in the crypt. Once the thought fixed in her mind, she found reason to nourish it.

She began gathering the documents that were the final verification of her son’s life, and death, in L.A., and there the name mix-up became evident.

Could it have been a Kendall or a Kendell or a Kandall whose body wound its way through an unwavering clinical process of final dissolution? She thought so. What made it plausible were photographs she obtained of Paul from those who knew him in the months before he became a statistic.

One showed him too thin to be the 203-pound person described on an autopsy table. Another showed him too heavy to have worn the clothes they turned over to her at the end.

He’s out there, she was convinced. He’s alive!

Valerie Kandell turned to every public agency she could think of. Either they didn’t respond or they repeated what the coroner’s office had already told her.

The Salvation Army’s missing person’s unit investigated for eight months and concluded that it was indeed Paul Kandell who had died. Still his mother would not be convinced.

She asked for my help two months ago, but there’s no help I can give her. A million people come to L.A. every year, looking for work, looking for adventure, looking for dreams. They get lost, they get hurt, they die.

“We get 2,000 requests a year to look for lost people,” Gerri Hood said. She’s coordinator of missing persons for the Salvation Army. “I’ve got a caseload of 1,600 applications now. They come to L.A. and get mixed up with the wrong people. That’s what happened here.”

Exactly what led to the death of Paul Kandell may never be known. Old friends, possibly drug addicts themselves, have been little help to Valerie. They have sins to hide and crimes to shield.

I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to convince her the search should end, but I think it’s time it did. Bury the boy in your heart, Mrs. Kandell. Let his memory lie as gently as it can.

Paul Kandell died in L.A., and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.