Friendship Ends With Violence : Slaying: Two men shared same uncommon German name. Alleged killer, 81, accused victim of stealing his money before shooting him, police say.

Ten years ago, while looking through a phone book, Ernst Tiedtke chanced upon someone else with his uncommon German surname. He rang up the stranger in Anaheim and struck up an enduring friendship.

As Ernst Tiedtke grew frail with age, the younger Helmut Tiedtke began to make frequent drives from Orange County to Los Angeles to assist the friend who shared his German heritage.

But on Sunday the relationship came to a violent end when Ernst Tiedtke, 81, allegedly pumped five bullets into his 57-year-old friend on the doorstep of the older man’s Highland Park house. Police say he fired a revolver after accusing his friend of stealing $36,000 he had hidden in his house.

Ernst Tiedtke told officers he discovered the cash was missing on Sunday and asked his friend to come over for a talk, Los Angeles Police Detective Ron Whitt said. Ernst Tiedtke told investigators about his final conversation with his friend, the detective said.

“As Helmut came to the door, Ernst confronted him and asked for his money,” Whitt said. “He said, ‘Give me my money or I’m going to kill you.’ Helmut denied taking it, so the old man shot him.”

The victim was not carrying a large sum of money when he was shot, and police have no evidence he was involved in a theft, Whitt said.

At his arraignment Tuesday, Ernst Tiedtke pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and was ordered to appear at a July 15 preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court. He was placed in Los Angeles County Jail without bail, court officials said.

The shooting victim’s widow, Ericka Tiedtke of Anaheim, said her husband, a mill worker at an Anaheim lumber company, did not steal from Ernst Tiedtke. “My husband would not take any money,” she said. “We didn’t want any money. We were just trying to help him.”

She said Ernst Tiedtke, who worked as a car mechanic, met her family after spotting the name in a phone book. “He decided to look us up and see if we were any relation,” she said. “He used to come to Anaheim once a week to chat and have coffee.”

More recently, the Anaheim couple began driving to the green stucco house on quiet Rutland Avenue to help the elderly man with household errands. “We’d go up there twice a week and take him out to eat or grocery shopping or to the doctor--anything he needed,” Ericka Tiedtke said.

She said Ernst Tiedtke became despondent after his wife died this year in an auto accident and may have become confused about where he kept his money. “After something like that happens, you forget things or misplace things,” Ericka Tiedtke said.

She said she and her husband had spent time with the older man on Saturday and were surprised when he telephoned Sunday, saying he needed to talk to Helmut Tiedtke. “I didn’t go with him this time,” his widow said.

Ernst Tiedtke had not reported a theft to police before the shooting, and the purported loss is not under investigation, Whitt said.