Actor Admits Role in Slayings but May Never Face a Jury

Two days after he arrived in Hollywood early last year, Philip Dowell and two new friends took a long ride into the desert with a young man who was about to die.

A boyish-looking, New York-born actor who had just turned 20, Dowell later recalled that he had been promised $500 for his help that day in March, 1984. In the desert, Dowell watched as one of his acquaintances told the young man he was going to be killed, forced him into a gully and ordered him to strip. Dowell turned away.

On the ride back to Los Angeles, Dowell’s companions described the hissing sound that their knife made as it penetrated the young man’s body. “Now I know how Charles Manson felt--and what a feeling it is,” one remarked.

About two weeks later, Dowell went for another ride with his friends, who by then had become his roommates. One told Dowell that he planned to pick up and kill a young male prostitute named Bill.

When the four men reached the Mojave, Dowell volunteered to drive the truck out of sight while his companions slashed Bill’s throat. When Dowell returned, Bill was gone and the men who had walked him into the desert were covered with blood.

Under usual circumstances, prosecutors say that someone in Dowell’s position could be prosecuted for murder and perhaps even face the death penalty because of the multiple killings.

But even though Dowell confessed his involvement, an unusual series of events in the bizarre case have so far prevented the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office from bringing Dowell to trial. Some law enforcement officials believe that Dowell may never face a jury.

The problem facing prosecutors is that the incriminating statements Dowell made to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department cannot be used against him in court because of an agreement the district attorney’s office struck with Dowell’s lawyer before he allowed his client to talk to authorities.

Without Dowell’s statements, the district attorney’s office has only marginal evidence that the young actor was involved in the first killing and none that he had anything to do with the second, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Rita Stapleton, who is prosecuting the case.

“It’s very frustrating,” Stapleton said in an interview last week. “By his own inadmissible statement, Philip Dowell has told us that he at the least was present at and, at the most, was a participant in the murder of two separate people . . . with a fairly long period of reflection time in between.”

If she could find other evidence to establish the facts that Dowell related in his statements, Stapleton said she would file murder charges against him. But she conceded that investigators have been searching for that evidence for nearly a year without success.

Dowell’s attorney, Alvin Hirsch, disagreed with Stapleton’s assessment of the case. “I believe that my client is an innocent man,” he said.

Dowell, who comes from a middle-class New York family, has never before run afoul of the law, Hirsch said, and has already had some success in his career, playing bit parts in the television soap opera “General Hospital” and in the film “Body Rock.”

Because Dowell may some day face prosecution, Hirsch declined to discuss the statements Dowell gave to sheriff’s investigators. The Times obtained official summaries of those statements last week.

When Dowell first talked to investigators last July, he stood accused of one count of murder, based largely on the testimony of a witness with whom Dowell had discussed the first killing, minimizing his own involvement.

At the time, Stapleton said, authorities believed that Dowell was only marginally involved with the four Hollywood transients, described by one investigator as a “mini-Manson family,” whom Stapleton was prosecuting for the brutal desert killings of three homosexual prostitutes. In fact, one defendant had told investigators that Dowell was not along when the second man, William Henning, was killed.

Before the preliminary hearing in the case, Hirsch asked the district attorney’s office to grant Dowell immunity from prosecution, guaranteeing that he would never face charges in the desert killing.

Before granting Dowell immunity, Stapleton said, she needed a statement from Dowell to evaluate how effective he might be as a witness against the other “family” members. She offered to allow him to talk about the crimes in an off-the-record interview that could not be used in court.

Stapleton said she had no other way to obtain a statement from Dowell because he had refused to waive his rights. “We promised him nothing, except that the statement he gave would not be used against him,” she said.

Under the off-the-record agreement, Dowell made two statements, mentioning only his involvement in the first death. Stapleton said she felt those statements incriminated him “much more deeply than the other (legally admissible) testimony I had to present at the preliminary hearing.” The request for immunity was denied. A transcript of one of the statements, unsealed earlier this year, is on file in Los Angeles Superior Court.

At the end of the preliminary hearing last October, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Nancy Brown dismissed the murder count against Dowell, citing insufficient evidence.

After the charge was dropped, Dowell’s lawyer again raised the subject of immunity.

“Because we were working on the assumption that what he had told us at the first interview was the extent and the absolute extent of his involvement, we then agreed to interview him again with a view toward the immunity that he had earlier been seeking,” Stapleton said.

The prosecutor said she was shocked when Dowell then told investigators he had been present during the second killing and, at the time, was still living with the other defendants.

‘Unique Kind of Case’

“This is a fairly unique kind of case,” Stapleton said. “Given the number of players, I was surprised that we did not receive information from some other source that would have earlier given us to understand the level and quality of Mr. Dowell’s involvement.”

With Dowell’s new admissions, Stapleton said, the interview was stopped and all talk of immunity was put aside.

However, Hirsch suggested in an interview last week that the district attorney’s office may have given Dowell immunity anyway. Hirsch said immunity can be granted indirectly, through a prosecutor’s conduct. He declined to elaborate, saying the matter will probably be taken up in court if Dowell is ever charged.

Dowell’s troubles began in February, 1984, while he was rehearsing for a play in Arizona. He met another young actor, Robert Harris Ormsbee, working on the same production. When the producers failed to pay them, Ormsbee suggested that Dowell travel with him to Los Angeles where, Ormsbee said, he had friends.

According to the statement Dowell made in July, he and Ormsbee were met at Los Angeles International Airport by George S. (Sonny) Godfrey, a man in his early 40s who had earlier befriended Ormsbee and who at one point became his lover. Two days later, while the young actors were staying at the home of a casting director, Dowell said, Ormsbee awoke him and said that Godfrey wanted them both to go for a ride.

Went to Hollywood

Godfrey arrived in his pickup truck, Dowell said, and brought them to his apartment at the Brevoort Hotel on Lexington Avenue in Hollywood. There they picked up a young man, Andrew Foster, who had spent the night tied up in Godfrey’s room. Dowell knew Foster by the name “Radar.” During the ride to his apartment, Godfrey said Radar had stolen some cocaine from him and that he planned to take him into the desert and “kick his ass.” Godfrey also suggested that he might kill Radar, Dowell recalled later.

Dowell told authorities that he and Radar climbed into the back of Godfrey’s truck, which was covered with a camper top. Godfrey and Ormsbee rode in the cab. During the ride, Godfrey told Dowell and Ormsbee that he would give them $500 for helping him with Radar that day. Dowell subsequently said that only Ormsbee was paid. When they arrived in the desert several hours later, Dowell said, Godfrey told Radar that he was about to be killed.

Forced Into Gully

Dowell described how he watched Godfrey march Radar into a gully and order him to strip, and then turned away. On the ride home, Dowell described a conversation in which Ormsbee discussed his admiration for Charles Manson and then said to Godfrey, “I can’t believe you threw . . . that rock on his head. . . .”

Then, Dowell told investigators, “Sonny said to Robert, ‘But you were the one that stabbed him,’ and they were making fun of the hissing noise that it made when they, when they, I guess when Robert stabbed him. . . . They were just sitting there, and they were just happy about what they had done.”

A few days after the first killing, Dowell moved into Godfrey’s apartment at the Brevoort.

During the July interviews with authorities, Dowell said he knew of no other killings that Godfrey and his companions had committed.

But last Oct. 23, after the murder charge against him had been dismissed and his lawyer had again asked for immunity, Dowell told investigators a different story.

Another Killing Planned

On March 18, 1984, the night before he moved out of Godfrey’s apartment, Dowell said he was riding in the pickup with Godfrey and Ormsbee when Godfrey said he wanted to pick up and kill a homosexual prostitute named Bill who had threatened Godfrey’s brother during a sexual encounter.

Godfrey spotted Bill, whose full name was William Henning, on Santa Monica Boulevard. With Dowell and Ormsbee concealed in the back of the truck, Godfrey solicited sex from Henning and then drove to Mulholland Drive, where Henning was handcuffed. Then they drove to the desert.

On the way, Dowell said, he offered “to drive the truck farther up the road during the killing so that no one would see the truck parked at any one location,” according to an investigator’s summary of the interview. As Godfrey and Ormsbee dragged Henning into the desert, Dowell drove off in the pickup.

When he returned, he told investigators, Godfrey and Ormsbee were covered with blood. They told Dowell that they had cut off Henning’s head.

Three Counts of Murder

Godfrey and Ormsbee are each awaiting trial in Los Angeles Superior Court on three counts of murder, to which they have pleaded not guilty. They each face the death penalty.

Thomas Lee Canup, 23, is charged with one count of murder in connection with the death of Andrew Foster. According to testimony at the preliminary hearing, Canup, on Godfrey’s instructions, brought Foster to Godfrey’s apartment and tied him up, but had no further involvement in Foster’s death.

A fourth defendant, Oleg Pinsky, 20, faces a single murder count in the death of a third victim, Carlos Pena, another male prostitute who was killed in the desert late last April. In a statement to police, Pinsky said he was just along for the ride.

Dowell, meanwhile, remains under subpoena to testify at the trials of his former roommates. “The investigation of Philip Dowell remains very open, very active,” Stapleton said. “I can’t speculate whether or not we will come up with other admissible evidence, but I suggest that we are very much looking for it.”