Pasadena Doctor Slain Outside His Home in Apparent Robbery

The chief pathologist at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey was stabbed to death in the driveway of his Pasadena home in an apparent robbery-homicide, police said Wednesday.

The body of Dr. Robert Peters, 57, was discovered shortly after 2 a.m. by his wife, who had checked for her husband after waking and realizing that he had not arrived home about midnight as expected.

Lt. Robert Montoya said Peters suffered multiple stab wounds and apparently died immediately. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office is scheduled to conduct an autopsy today.

“There are obvious signs of robbery,” Montoya said, but he declined to disclose what the signs were or what may have been taken. “We have no witnesses,” he said. “We’re proceeding on the investigation as a robbery-homicide at this point.”

Montoya speculated that either Peters was followed home, or the killer or killers waited for him to return to his Madeline Drive home in an affluent neighborhood near Orange Grove Boulevard.

“We’re checking his activities on the last day at work to give us a thumbnail sketch,” Montoya said. “We’re talking to everyone at the hospital.”

At Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center, Dr. Matthew Locks, the medical director, reported that Peters had worked late Tuesday night, as he often did. “He was a prodigious worker,” Locks told the Associated Press. “I know he spent many hours here. He was very dedicated.” Peters also served as director of laboratories at Rancho Los Amigos and taught pathology at the USC Medical School. His speciality was liver diseases, and he was a member of a group that taught about such diseases around the world.

He joined Rancho Los Amigos in 1980 and became chief pathologist in 1981. He was the father of three grown children.