Deported Murder Witness Pleads Guilty

A reputed member of the Israeli Mafia, who was deported after testifying as a key prosecution witness in the 1979 dismemberment murders of a couple at the Bonaventure Hotel, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court to a charge of illegally returning to the United States.

After accepting the plea of Eliahu Komerchero, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. scheduled sentencing for May 6. Hatter has the option of again deporting Komerchero or sending him to prison for two years. He also could impose a $1,000 fine.

The 32-year-old Komerchero’s fate could be governed by whether Los Angeles County authorities want to again use him as a witness in the murder case, since the state Court of Appeal last week reversed the second-degree murder conviction of one of his co-defendants, Joseph Zakaria.

It was Komerchero’s testimony that helped convict Zakaria, now 33, and Jehuda Avital, now 31, in the Oct. 7, 1979, slayings of Eli Ruven, 24, and his wife, Esther, 22.

Cocaine Deal

The Ruvens were slain because they cheated Avital on a cocaine deal, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Jorgensen said.

In the murder trial, Komerchero told of both victims being shot with a silencer-equipped .22-caliber pistol in a room in the downtown luxury hotel. They then were dismembered and their bodies packed inside suitcases, which later were thrown into trash dumpsters in Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks, he testified.

Komerchero initially was charged with murder but was allowed to plead guilty to reduced charges of voluntary manslaughter in June, 1981, in exchange for his testimony against Zakaria and Avital.

He testified in the 1981 trial that he brought the Ruvens to the Bonaventure from their North Hollywood home on Avital’s orders, thinking only that Avital was planning to “scare” them. Komerchero admitted that he helped dispose of the Ruvens’ bodies but said he did not participate in the actual killings.

Served Two-Year Term

He served two years of a four-year prison term before being paroled on Sept. 17, 1983. After his release, Komerchero was deported to Israel.

But he came to the attention of officials here last September during a drug investigation jointly conducted by the Simi Valley police and investigators from the Ventura and Los Angeles County sheriff’s departments.

Even though he was acquitted of cocaine possession charges in that case, federal authorities took him into custody on the separate charge of illegally re-entering the country.

In Tuesday’s proceeding, Komerchero admitted that he re-entered the United States after being deported, but he told Hatter he did not know he had to have the permission of the U.S. attorney general to return.

Jorgensen said he is reviewing the situation in the aftermath of the appellate court’s reversal of Zakaria’s conviction and plans to confer about the status of Komerchero with Assistant U.S. Atty. James Asperger, who is handling the federal case against the Israeli national.