Authorities credit good police work

Good old-fashioned police work and pavement pounding helped link a Garden Grove man as a suspect in a double-murder in February that snuffed out the lives of a Costa Mesa man and his co-worker, authorities say.

The trail in the investigation had gone dry until the authorities this week recovered a Lexus sedan in Anaheim belonging to the second murder victim, Elizabeth Ann Palmer, 50, of Fountain Valley. Her car had been missing since Feb. 2, the day the bodies of Palmer and Matthew Francis Scott, 42, were found in the office of a manufactured home dealership in Stanton.

When Orange County Sheriff’s deputies found the missing car near the El Dorado Inn, after an Anaheim patrol officer had spotted the parked vehicle, it was clear to them that someone had been using the car regularly since the slayings. They set out to find who was driving it by fanning out and combing the neighborhood around the motel for information.

Department spokesman Jim Amormino said that about 40 deputies canvassed the neighborhood Wednesday night and came up with a name: Hilbert Pinell Thomas.

Evidence found in the car also linked Thomas, 38, to the Stanton killings, Amormino said. Thomas appeared in court Friday on double-murder charges with a sentencing enhancement for using a gun. He did not enter a plea and had his arraignment rescheduled for Dec. 4. He is being held without bail.

On Feb. 2, Thomas walked into the office of Golden Sun Homes, the manufactured home dealership in Stanton, and robbed and killed Scott and Palmer at gunpoint, authorities said.

They are still figuring out a motive because the office did not hold a lot of cash, and the only thing stolen was Palmer’s car. Her purse was left in the office. For months, authorities have said that her car was the key to the case. If convicted of all charges, Thomas could be sentenced to life without parole, or even death.