Police Say Pair Shot by Intruders

A senior Hells Angel nicknamed “Large Larry” was shot through the head in his industrial garage home by intruders who also killed his live-in girlfriend, police said Tuesday.

“They must have got him when he was sleeping,” said Michael “Big Mike” Lajeunesse of the assailants who shot his brother, Laurence Richard “Large Larry” Lajeunesse.

The bodies of Larry Lajeunesse, 45, and his girlfriend, Tammie Ann Brannigan, 35, were discovered Monday in the rooms they lived in behind their scrap metal business amid rusty auto parts, antique swords and guns, grandfather clocks and a large trove of Disney memorabilia.

As detectives continued to comb the crime scene Tuesday for fingerprints and other evidence, the Lajeunesse family recalled the dead man, who stood 6-foot-2 and weighed 450 pounds, as a jovial sort with great strength.

His brother, who scrapped and rebuilt cars, could lift a transmission and drop it into a truck with his bare hands, said Michael Lajeunesse.

“Changing a motor, to him, was like changing socks,” said Lajeunesse, himself the spitting image of wrestler-cum-Minnesota Gov. Jesse “The Body” Ventura.

Larry Lajeunesse, who had a peacock tattooed on his left arm and the Hells Angels’ winged skull on his back, was found slumped across his bed in a small room in back of his shop in the 9300 block of Oso Avenue. He had been shot at least once in the back of the head, the brother said.

Brannigan, described by the family as a slim, quiet, gentle woman, was shot to death in an adjoining unit, where her boyfriend’s burgundy Harley Davidson was parked among their collection of old weapons, watches and Mouseketeer ears. Many of those items, along with a computer that Brannigan used for Internet surfing, were missing, family members said.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s elite Robbery Homicide Division investigators were customarily tight-lipped about the case and declined to comment on the motive or method of the slayings.

Relatives and friends said police told them Larry Lajeunesse had been killed first and Brannigan was then taken to the other room and shot.

Also unclear is what role, if any, his gang membership had in the slayings. The Hells Angels is one of the nation’s oldest and most notorious motorcycle clubs. Although membership has dwindled in recent years, police say they are known for drug running--particularly methamphetamine.

When the pair were killed was still unclear, although one of the last people to see them alive may have been Don Chapman, 39--a childhood friend and sometime employee of the dead man. Chapman said he towed a car for his friend Thursday night, but found the lights off and the doors locked when he returned to the garage Friday night.

A pair of visiting Hells Angels found the bodies Monday morning, he said.

Mechanics in nearby shops said Lajeunesse and Brannigan were quiet neighbors who lived in the industrial complex for the last five years. They called the couple homebodies, who entertained guests who rode in astride Harleys but never once had an audible argument.

“He was big and she was small,” said Russ Farber, whose custom auto shop is across the alleyway from Lajeunesse’s unit. “They were an odd couple, but they kinda seemed to get along all the time.”

Brannigan often swept the alley clean, cluttered as it was with the fragments of wrecked and dismantled cars, Farber said.

On Nov. 12, the family threw a birthday party for Larry Lajeunesse and his mother, who turned 75 the same day. He showed off a belt his fellow Hells Angels had given him in honor of his 10-year membership, said Mike Lajeunesse. It was the first time that the entire family had gathered together in almost a decade and the last time they saw Larry alive, he said.

Mike Lajeunesse was dressed in a Viking costume, interviewing for a television commercial, when he got the news about his brother Monday morning, he said. He went through with the interview, but he doubts he’ll get the part.

“It felt like an ice pick in my heart,” said Lajeunesse. “I had hoped that it was somebody else, but when I saw the size of that bag on the gurney, I knew it was him.”