Don had an alibi. Robert Krauch said he was asleep at home when the murder occurred. A witness saw a man on a bike near the crime scene. Robert Krauch said it wasn’t him. Robert Krauch said he didn’t know his wife was cheating on him.
The patrol guard was a red-hot suspect. A woman said the man and his cousin raped and sodomized her two years ago. It was her word against theirs. The cops believed them. The matter went no further.
Detectives leaned on the guard. He denied the earlier sex beef and denied killing Bunny Krauch. He took a polygraph test and passed it.
A half-dozen detectives were assigned to the case. Dozens more volunteered. The case became the rage of Sheriff’s Homicide. It featured a beautiful victim and a rocking milieu. It was
They hit the area hard. They turned Charlie Brown’s upside down and hassled every creep who ever pawed Bunny Krauch. They interviewed the L.A. Lakers and Bunny’s waitress pals. They leaned on tit pinchers and registered sex offenders. They chased Bunny’s ghost.
Some drank too much. Some fell in love. Some got righteously laid. A few took the big plunge behind sex and murder and flushed their family lives down the shitter for women they just met.
Bunny Krauch put a hex on Sheriff’s Homicide. Stoner loved her for it. He was sorry some other women got hurt. He knew how to keep things straight. He knew how to keep his thing with women sealed up inside him.
He fell hard for Bunny. He wished the guys who took the big plunge knew how to love like he did.
He clicked with Charlie Guenther. They both liked to work fall-tilt.
They read the
It started as an LAPD missing-persons case. Roy Radin’s assistant reported Radin missing. Radin was staying at a hotel-apartment complex in West Hollywood. He walked out the door on 5/13/83. He got into a limo with a female coke dealer named Laney Jacobs. Radin and Jacobs were pissed off at each other. Jacobs thought Radin got one of her minions to steal some dope and money from her. Radin and Jacobs were hooked up with a has been producer named Robert Evans. They were haggling over the
Radin and Jacobs were meeting to hash out their disputes. They were supposed to dine at La Scala in Beverly Hills. Radin feared foul play. He told his pal Demond Wilson to tail Laney’s limo. Wilson was a has-been actor. He used to star in the
Radin split with Laney. Wilson blew his tail. Radin dropped off the face of the earth.
The LAPD couldn’t find Laney Jacobs. Bob Evans didn’t know where Roy Radin was. The LAPD had Radin pegged as a fly-by-night cokehead. They figured he’d turn up sooner or later. They dropped their investigation.
Radin turned up dead five weeks later. A beekeeper found his body in Caswell Canyon up near Gorman. It was badly decomped. Twenty-two-caliber shell fragments were scattered all around it. Somebody stuck dynamite in Radin’s mouth postmortem. The explosion failed to obliterate his teeth. Forensic techs ID’d the body from dental charts.
Gorman was in L.A. County. Carlos Avila and Willy Ahn caught the case for Sheriff’s Homicide.
They studied the LAPD missing-persons file. They tagged Laney Jacobs as a major coke dealer. They learned that she was tight with a strongarm man named Bill Mentzer. They located Jacobs in Aspen, Colorado. They decided not to jerk her chain just yet. They couldn’t locate Mentzer.
Months passed. Willy Ahn got sick. He learned he had a potentially fatal brain tumor. He worked the Radin case anyway. Carlos Avila checked the LAPD computer and learned that Bill Mentzer was suspected of a recent contract hit.
The victim was named June Mincher. She was an ugly, 200-pound black woman. Most people thought she was a drag queen or a man. She was a prostitute, phone-sex entrepreneur and shakedown artist.
She was hassling a wealthy family. The grandson was one of her tricks. The family hired a private eye named Mike Pascal to teach her a lesson. Pascal farmed the job out to Bill Mentzer. Mentzer pistol-whipped June Mincher and a trick she was fucking at her pad. Mincher kept bugging the family. She was shot to death on 5/3/84. Mentzer was their number-one suspect. They had jackshit for proof.
Avila couldn’t find Mentzer. Months went by. Avila worked fresh murders and came back to the Radin case when his workload thinned out. Willy Ahn was now gravely ill.
An LAPD narc named Freddy McKnight shot his mouth off to a guy in the DA’s Office. McKnight said he had the inside scoop on the Roy Radin job. He was going to bust a big Sheriff’s case himself.
The DA’s man called Bob Grimm. Grimm called his top contact at LAPD and told him to squeeze McKnight. The squeeze worked. McKnight told Grimm and Avila his story.
McKnight had a snitch named Mark Fogel. He popped Fogel with a big load of Laney Jacobs’ coke. Fogel ran a limo service. Bill Mentzer and a guy named Bob Lowe drove for him part-time. Fogel said that Mentzer and Lowe were in on the Radin snuff. Fogel just clued McKnight to a big coke deal. Mentzer and Lowe were bringing two kilos in to the L.A. airport. It was Laney Jacobs’ dope. McKnight was set to bust Mentzer and Lowe right there at LAX.
Avila joined the arrest team. The bust went down smoothly. They took two kilos off Mentzer and Lowe. Mentzer and Lowe refused to discuss the Radin snuff. They bailed out of custody fast.
Mentzer and Lowe shared an apartment in the Valley. Avila got a warrant and searched it. He found a snapshot of Mentzer and two unknown men in the desert. It looked like the spot where Roy Radin’s body was found. Avila found some car registration papers. Laney Jacobs gave Bob Lowe a Cadillac the very day Roy Radin disappeared.
Avila revisited the Radin crime scene. The photo was shot right there. Avila ran the photo by his witnesses. Nobody knew the two men with Mentzer.
Willy Ahn died. Mentzer and Lowe beat the dope rap on a search-and-seizure glitch. Avila braced the DA. The DA read his Radin case summary and declined to file. He said the case was weak.
