Fresno Murder Probe Leads to Key Evidence in Reseda

The gunman who executed the Ewell family on Easter Sunday, 1992, in Fresno was a stickler for detail. Which made it all the more remarkable that the barrel of the gun used in the sensational triple murder turned up in a field in Reseda.

The killer had gone so far as to shave his entire body before entering the Ewell house. Inside, he waited for the victims for 12 hours, passing the time while sitting on a plastic sheet--so that he would not leave behind even an errant eyelash. His weapon of choice was a 9-millimeter assault-style rifle from a little-known Colorado arms manufacturer, the better to confound investigators.

But, Fresno authorities added, there it was in that field in Reseda, beneath a clump of weeds and two inches of dirt--the gun barrel.

Unearthing the barrel brought to a close a three-year chase that ranged up and down California, and prompted the arrests in March of Dana Ewell, sole heir to an $8-million estate, and Joel Radovcich, his best pal from the San Fernando Valley and the alleged triggerman.

Both 24-year-old men are being held without bail in the Fresno County Jail. Each has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder for which prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty. A preliminary hearing is set for Monday.

In a case filled with twists and turns, new information has surfaced since the arrests that underscores an incredible attention to detail, from crime through cover-up. But court records and interviews show that, along the way, there were also glaring slip-ups.

The murder weapon, for instance, was indeed no ordinary gun. It featured a ballistics signature so distinctive that detectives considered it as good as a fingerprint. And, sources said, though the gun was broken up and other parts tossed down storm drains and into dumpsters, never to be seen again, the barrel was buried--where, ultimately, detectives could dig it up.

But what launched the case, court records make clear, was the brazen behavior of Ewell and Radovcich.

After the killings, they refused to hide an exceedingly close friendship that began when they were in college.

Radovcich moved in for a while with Ewell at his parents’ ranch house. Ewell paid for Radovcich’s helicopter lessons. They took trips together to Mexico.

All of it, according to court records and interviews, was subsidized by the Ewell estate. All the while, the two college whiz kids took meticulous steps to avoid detection.

They made purchases in cash. They used only pay phones. They paged each other through a system of codes that spelled out time and place. Radovcich even had a special way for Ewell, and a few carefully chosen others, to remember his pager number: Dial KILLA-J-R.

“Just play the game,” Radovcich advised one day from a pay phone, according to court records. “I think it’s going well.”

As Fresno County Sheriff’s Detectives John Souza and Christian Curtice trailed Ewell and Radovcich, from a 7-Eleven in Canoga Park to a leafy campus in Santa Clara, they initially worked on the theory that the Ewell estate was the sole motive for the crime. But as they dug deeper, they came to focus as well on the men’s relationship, which blossomed when they were dorm-mates at Santa Clara University.

“Their relationship went far beyond a contract to kill Dana’s parents and sister,” a law enforcement source said. “They were very close and they continued to remain close after the murders. . . . It was more than money. It was that closeness that led to their undoing.”

In court affidavits, detectives on the case took pains to note that Radovcich and Ewell appeared to be “extremely close friends whenever they were together.”

The court papers do not elaborate, but the implication, as defense lawyers acknowledge, is that Radovcich and Ewell were lovers and intended to share the wealth.

Authorities declined to elaborate on the issue. But defense lawyers said they are aware of the suspicion and consider it a poor substitute for evidence.

“When you talk about rumors that he’s gay . . . [here’s] the answer: They’re on a campaign of character assassination to try to prejudice as many people as possible,” Dana Ewell’s longtime attorney, Fresno lawyer Richard Berman, said of authorities.

“Because they can’t prove the case in a court of law. They just don’t have it.”

Added E. Terrence Woolf, Radovcich’s attorney: “They were arrested on the basis of basically what could be called suspicious telephone calls. I think that what [prosecutors] have now, what they have presented, is a long way from proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Ewell, in fact, would appear to have the ultimate alibi. He had spent the day of the slayings--April 19, 1992--in the Bay Area with a female friend and her FBI agent father.

And, initially, the killings looked like the work of professionals.

Dead inside the adobe-style ranch house were father Dale Ewell, 59, mother Glee Ewell, 57, and daughter Tiffany Ewell, 24. The gunman missed only once, sources said, and picked up the expended shells. Rumors swirled in Fresno about drug smugglers and foreign mobsters.

No one could fathom that it might be the work of the son and his best friend. Dana Ewell and Joel Radovcich seemed to come from such solid families.

Dale Ewell had built a million-dollar airplane dealership and invested shrewdly in farmland. Glee was a visible civic activist who served on the State Bar of California’s governing board.

Radovcich grew up in the suburban comfort of West Hills. His mother played organ at the family’s church. His father, an engineer, was president of the grade-school parents’ association. A brother made it as an Air Force pilot. His twin sisters, younger by 10 years, are the neighborhood baby-sitters.

As a boy, Radovcich rode his skateboard and lifted weights. At the prestigious Chaminade College Preparatory School in West Hills, he kept to himself.

“This is not a negative description: He blended in,” said Father Mario Pariante, principal at Chaminade through Radovcich’s junior year in high school. “He was very nondescript.”

Investigators, however, kept digging past the veneer put up by him and his friend.

Ewell, they learned, had an obsession with money that went back to grade school, where he would pass out cash to playmates.

In college, his heroes were Michael Milken, the junk bond king who served time for fraud, and Joe Hunt’s Billionaire Boys Club, whose efforts to make a fortune in the commodities market ended in murder convictions.

At Santa Clara, Ewell dressed in elegant suits rather than the usual college fare. And he created a false past. He told a San Jose newspaper, which profiled him as a young man on the move, that he sold mutual funds and built a bankrupt airplane dealership into a $4-million business. Neither was true.

As for Radovcich, he breezed through Santa Clara in 3 1/2 years--like Ewell, earning a business degree--and developed a fascination with guns, silencers and explosives. During college, he had survivalist magazines sent in the name of a friend, Tom Duong, to Duong’s house near campus.

“I opened up this box, and it was this whole assortment of Soldier of Fortune-type magazines,” Duong, now an Air Force officer based in Arkansas, said in an interview. “I was pretty mad, and I told him about it,” he added.

Detectives were convinced they were on the right track when they traveled to West Hills to interview Radovcich simply as one of Ewell’s good friends and told him they wanted to ask some questions. His unexpected response: “Why, are you going to arrest me?”

During that first interview, detailed in court records, Radovcich claimed that he and Ewell were only casual friends. He also offered an alibi, saying he had spent that Easter hanging out at a Canoga Park body shop. The owner of the shop, Nick Johns, said in court papers he had no memory of that.

After that first meeting with police, Radovcich’s movements became more erratic. He moved to Fresno, to Huntington Beach, to Costa Mesa. He took helicopter lessons, first in Fresno, then in Long Beach.

The helicopter lessons cost thousands of dollars. At no time did Radovcich have a job, according to court records.

A roommate in Huntington Beach, truck driver Rick Memmen, said he vividly recalled how Radovcich would spend his days: studying flight plans, eating fresh carrots, celery and Louis Rich turkey and listening to a stack of brand-new CDs.

Radovcich never used the apartment phone, Memmen said. “I remember one day, I came home and he heard on the [answering machine] that there was one call. I said, ‘Wonder if that’s for you or me?’ He said, all paranoid, ‘It couldn’t be for me. Nobody knows that number.’ ”

Instead, Radovcich used pay phones at 7-Elevens or grocery stores throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. Often, Fresno detectives--who had obtained a clone of his pager--were at the next phone over, listening to his half of the calls and using a radio transmitter to record them.

They overheard him making such comments as: “Got a lawyer,” “Twenty-five thousand big ones for doing nothing,” and “I didn’t tell them anything,” court records reveal.

In one affidavit, detectives assert that Radovcich called Dana Ewell with fears that a female friend “was going to talk” to detectives.

In another call, detectives heard Radovcich say: “They are going to lock you up,” “I can’t be around you,” “They will play on your fear,” and “I love you, too.”

At one point, Radovcich sensed that something was up. He went to his pager dealer, “paranoid that police or someone was receiving his pager messages,” an affidavit says. The dealer offered to change the pager number, which Radovcich agreed to. But he also demanded that the account name in the company computer be changed to “Mike Smith.”

Ewell, meanwhile, was back in Fresno, carrying his dad’s briefcase and trying to learn the ropes at the airplane dealership he had inherited.

For detectives, a case was taking shape. “Their behavior after the murders put the spotlight back on themselves,” said a Fresno law enforcement official. “Everything they did was like they had taken it out of some movie.”

The break came when Souza determined that the murder weapon was no ordinary rifle. It came from a limited stock out of Feather Industries of Trinidad, Colo.

The company’s model AT-9 features what experts call a “one-in-12 twist,” meaning it spins the bullet through one complete revolution in each 12 inches of travel inside the barrel. Such spin keeps a bullet stable and accurate in flight, like a spiraling football.

A one-in-12 twist is distinctive, Feather Industries President Merv Chapman said, because the industry standard is one-in-nine.

In 1992, only a few AT-9s were sold to customers in California, Chapman said. On that short list was Jack Ponce. A UCLA graduate, he had gone to high school at Chaminade--and was best friends with Joel Radovcich’s older brother, Peter.

Souza sought out Ponce. He admitted that he had bought the gun as a birthday present for himself and received it on April 8, 1992--only 11 days before the Ewell killings.

Confronted with the prospect of a murder charge, Ponce quickly provided extensive details of the crime. He led investigators to the gun barrel, buried in the San Fernando Valley a couple of blocks from Peter Radovcich’s apartment.

Peter, 26, a plumber by trade, helped break the gun into pieces, authorities said. He was detained but then released after agreeing to testify against his brother. Ponce, also 26, has also agreed to testify for prosecutors. Charges against him are expected to be dropped, and he is due in a Fresno court today for a hearing.

“It was a good case going in,” said a law enforcement source. “But the arrest of Ponce and his agreeing to turn over made it 200% better.”

Ponce, authorities said, provided intricate details of the crime. He related that Joel Radovcich had told him about shaving his body hair--head, underarms, even his pubic area--then waiting for hours on the plastic sheet.

Defense lawyers maintain that whatever Ponce has to say should be viewed with suspicion. “Obviously he has a motive for cooperation,” Woolf said. “Going from being charged with capital murder to walking out the door, that is quite a plea bargain.”

But in Fresno, memories of the summer of 1992 are still vivid--when presumably, according to authorities, the gunman’s hair would have been growing back.

“There was something interesting about Joel,” said Jim Brannan, president of Fresno’s Mazzei Flying Service, where Radovcich took flight lessons. “He wore a baseball hat all the time, even when he was indoors. He never took it off. I used to kid him, ‘Why don’t you take that thing off?’ He just laughed.”