Slaying Suspects in Custody : Family Pulls Together in Pursuit of Justice

Lise Singrin, 20, was watching television in the den of her mother’s three-bedroom Long Beach home when two men stole in through the sliding-glass door.

In a back bedroom, her mother, Jean Singrin, was reading a book. Then she heard the screams. Running toward the den, she was grabbed by a bearded stranger in the darkened hallway. “Don’t yell. Don’t scream. We’re not going to hurt her,” she remembers his saying.

Pushing past the intruder, Jean Singrin scrambled into the den. A man was beating Lise across the face with a double-barreled shotgun. Jean Singrin jumped to her daughter’s defense but was thrown to the ground; blows hailed down upon her.

Like a thunderclap, the gun went off, the blast from both barrels hitting Lise Singrin in the forehead. As the two men fled, the young woman slumped to the floor.

Thirty minutes after Jeannie Cross learned of her younger sister’s killing she was on the phone with Lise’s friends, searching for clues. For Cross and other members of the family, it was the beginning of what would become an 18-month mission.

During the weeks and months after the May, 1983, slaying of Lise Singrin, friends and family members distributed more than 70,000 leaflets with her picture and composite drawings of her attackers.

In an effort to bolster the police investigation, the family hired two different sets of private investigators. Cross, 33, ran down scores of leads, spending hours on the phone with Lise’s school friends, acquaintances, anyone who might have some clue to the crime.

“We were not the typical, docile family that was going to leave it up to the police,” said Susan Kimbell, Lise’s 37-year-old sister.

Helped in part by tips received because of the leaflets, police in late November arrested two men on suspicion of the murder of Singrin.

On Friday, a preliminary hearing is set in Long Beach Municipal Court for Thomas Owen, 26, who is charged with murder. Arthur Jacobs, 32, is to be arraigned that day in Long Beach Superior Court for murder. They both face sentences of 25 years to life if convicted of first-degree murder.

According to Long Beach Police Detective George Fox, who was one of the two investigators on the case, the family’s efforts are a rarity. And Fox said that the leaflets prompted calls from people with information about the case.

“Generally, I don’t like civilians getting involved with a murder investigation,” Fox said. “They just aren’t familiar with the law, and sometimes the things they do can jeopardize a case. . . . But it was different with the Singrin family.”

Said Jean Singrin: “I’m really not looking for vengeance, for vindication. Nothing will make me understand why it happened.

‘Abrupt Halt’ “Lise’s death was an abrupt halt to just living,” said Singrin, 65, in an interview last week at her home.

“I tried to survive by doing the things that I had to do, by doing the things I needed to do to go on,” she said, tears filling her eyes.

Three months after Lise’s death, Singrin--who was widowed in 1970--was ready to move from the home in which she had raised her six children. The house had been painted, a real estate listing prepared. Then she changed her mind.

“I became extremely angry,” she recalled. “I thought that those men who took away Lise were not going to take my home away.”

Her grown children could not understand her decision, she said. But others in the family also had difficulty coming to terms with their emotions about Lise’s death.

“It was like a cue ball hitting a triangle of pool balls. We each reacted in a different way,” Kimbell said. “Some of us wanted as much information as we could get--some of us wanted no information. Everyone handled it in their own way.”

Perhaps more than any other family member, Jeannie Cross wanted to know more. A career guidance specialist at Los Alamitos High School, she interrupted work on her doctorate to launch the leaflet campaign and pursue many of the tips. She typed information on hundreds of 5-by-8-inch index cards.

“I couldn’t accept the fact that Lise had been murdered, the fact that someone would have hurt the precious, priceless thing,” Cross said. “Just for her to be beaten and die so indignantly--it just goes against everything she was.”

City College Student At the time of her death, Singrin was in her second year at City College and had just been accepted at Long Beach State. Besides participating in sports, she was an avid dancer and loved music, family members said.

Cross, along with her husband, Jim, worked with police detectives Fox and Logan Wren to make sure no information was passed by. During Lise’s funeral, the family had photographers and a video-camera crew take pictures of the crowd, hoping to spot suspects.

But the lines of communication were not always perfect. Early on, the family grew concerned that the detectives were not pursuing the case vigorously enough. Fox and Wren quieted those fears by meeting with them, outlining the information they had compiled.

Jeannie Cross proposed that the family distribute the leaflets. “We were thinking of ways in which we could get as much mass information as possible,” she said.

On June 5, 1983, the day that would have been Lise Singrin’s 21st birthday, an organizational rally was held in a park near the quiet, residential neighborhood of Lakewood Village. More than 300 friends and neighbors attended, picking up handfuls of leaflets. During the first week, more than 10,000 leaflets were distributed, Cross said.

“I think we would have gone crazy if we were forced to sit and do nothing,” she said.

To manage the logistical effort, volunteers were assigned to various sections of the community that Cross plotted on a master map. A friend translated the information into Spanish.

Then the tips started to trickle in. Cross talked to friends of Lise’s from school and her teammates on the college gymnastics and swimming teams.

On the anniversary of the slaying, family and friends renewed the leaflet effort, distributing more than 5,000 in one day.

Fox said Jacobs and Owen were arrested Nov. 30 after being identified in photo lineups. He would not discuss other evidence in the case.

When a bail hearing was held a week later, the suspects had alibis that placed Jacobs in Desert Hot Springs and Owen on an offshore oil island at the time of the slaying. The two were released on their own recognizance.

“On the day of their release, we all felt like we had been hit in the solar plexus,” Jim Cross said.

At last week’s preliminary hearing Municipal Court Judge Richard McEachen ordered Jacobs held for trial after he was identified in testimony by Jean Singrin and by a neighbor, Randall Devois, who said he saw Jacobs leaving the Singrin house. McEachen set bail at $100,000 for Jacobs and $250,000 for Owen, who are both in custody.