Suspect held in man’s fiery death

The detectives assured his family over and over that they would catch the man who splashed gasoline on their homeless brother, John Robert McGraham, and set him ablaze on a Mid-Wilshire street corner last fall. But the man’s brother, David McGraham, wasn’t so sure.

“They said unequivocally, ‘We’ll get him,’ ” he said. “As time passed, I thought it wasn’t going to happen. I just figured the killer got away with it.”

Then, on Thursday afternoon, his sister Susanne McGraham-Paisley called him at his home in Washington state. She was sobbing as she told her brother that she had just heard from one of the Los Angeles Police Department detectives.

“They got him,” she told her older brother.

Detectives arrested Benjamin Mathew Martin, 30, on suspicion of murder just before noon Thursday in Rancho Mirage. Witness identifications and DNA evidence left behind tied Martin to the killing, said Lt. Mark Tappan. But officials did not provide details on what led them to Martin.

Law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is open, described Martin as a former barber in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood with a grudge against the homeless.

Martin is not believed to be a gang member, but he does have a previous criminal conviction for a drug offense. DNA taken from that conviction was tied to the October killing, the sources said.

“The attack occurred without any apparent provocation. The victim was totally helpless,” said LAPD Chief William J. Bratton. “The suspect intentionally set the victim on fire and then ran from the scene, leaving a red plastic gasoline container.”

LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck said the alleged motivation for the killing appears to be “straight-up personal dislike.”

The gruesome slaying of John Robert McGraham, 55, as he sat on his usual corner at 3rd and Berendo streets Oct. 9 galvanized the multiethnic, largely working-class neighborhood. Martin is Latino, as are the neighborhood people who regularly gave McGraham -- who was white -- food and clothes.

On that night, residents and shopkeepers found McGraham lying on his back in a nearby parking lot, his body still ablaze. They rushed to extinguish the flames, but were unable to save McGraham, whose clothes had been burned off.

The crime provoked widespread introspection about the dangers faced by homeless people in the state. Hundreds gathered for vigils at the corner that McGraham called home.

On the day of his funeral at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard, more than 300 people -- homeless, the poor and the well-heeled, struggling immigrants and white-collar professionals -- packed the church.

McGraham had been a bellhop at the old Ambassador Hotel in the early 1980s before he fell into depression and lost his job. For two decades, his siblings were unable to get him help or get him off the streets. So instead they visited him at his adopted home on a grimy sidewalk in a teeming Mid-Wilshire neighborhood. They would bring their children to visit “Uncle Johnny.”

They took comfort in knowing that some of the neighborhood shopkeepers and residents looked after him. McGraham was described as a “Star Trek” fan who looked up to the dashing starship commander James T. Kirk.

McGraham’s mother had fretted about him until the day she died of cancer in 1987. “John, please take care of yourself,” she told him the last time she saw him. “You look good.”

Residents and shopkeepers described him as harmless and nice -- no trouble at all. But some worried that he could be a target because he was homeless and dingy. He smelled bad, but sometimes someone would pick him up and get him a haircut and a shower.

Jorge Garcia, owner of La Morenita Oaxaquena restaurant, was one of the people who ran out to the parking lot and tried to put out the flames engulfing McGraham. On Thursday he said there would be relief over the arrest of a suspect. “You didn’t know who to look out for, to tell the truth,” he said.

McGraham’s sister said she was thankful to the neighborhood for helping with the arrest. Since her brother’s killing, she has gotten involved in efforts to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by the homeless. She said she was thankful to the LAPD detectives, who she said not only kept in regular contact, but also vowed that they would find the killer.

About a week ago, she said, Det. Michael Whelan told her for the first time that they had “solid leads.” On Thursday, Whelan called her again, this time telling her that they had caught the suspect.

David McGraham said he had lost a sister months before his brother was killed. When his sister Susanne called him Thursday afternoon, at first he thought another tragedy had befallen the family. She had started to cry soon after he picked up the phone.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“No, David, it’s OK,” she said between sobs. “They got him.”

He grew tearful as he recalled the phone call. “I thought, ‘My God, I can’t believe it. They got him.’ ”

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hector.becerra@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

Times staff writer Joel Rubin contributed to this report.