Murder Suspect Admitted Guilt in Phone Call, Deputy Testifies

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy testified Tuesday that an 18-year-old Calabasas man accused of gunning down an acquaintance on a Calabasas street June 28 called the sheriff’s station several hours after the killing and admitted, “I did it.”

Deputy Herbert Wielkie said that, during a rambling, 45-minute conversation that night, Robert M. Rosenkrantz confessed to the killing of Steven Redman, 17.

The testimony came during Rosenkrantz’s preliminary hearing in Municipal Court in Calabasas on a charge of murder with the special circumstances of premeditation and lying in wait. At the end of the hearing, Rosenkrantz was ordered to stand trial on the charge, for which he could receive the death penalty if convicted.

Arraignment is scheduled Oct. 1 in Van Nuys Superior Court.

Deputy Taught Suspect

Wielkie testified before Commissioner Richard L. Brand that he knew Rosenkrantz because the youth had graduated a week before the killing from a class on police issues that Wielkie taught at Calabasas High School. On the night of the shooting, he said, Rosenkrantz called the Agoura sheriff’s substation and asked to speak to him.

Rosenkrantz said during the call that he was 1,000 miles away and still had the Uzi semiautomatic rifle used in the killing earlier in the day, Wielkie said.

Wielkie said he pleaded with Rosenkrantz to turn himself in, arguing that cooperation with authorities might help him in court proceedings. But Rosenkrantz said that would be a “minor consideration,” Wielkie testified.

“I asked, ‘What would be the major one?’ ” Wielkie said. Rosenkrantz replied, “The major one is that I did it,” Wielkie testified.

Rosenkrantz was aware that the conversation was being taped, Wielkie said.

Suspected Motive

Investigators believe the killing was prompted by the discovery of Robert Rosenkrantz in a homosexual embrace with another man by Redman and his best friend, Rosenkrantz’s 17-year-old brother, Joey. The youths later told Robert Rosenkrantz’s parents and classmates about the incident, enraging the 18-year-old, investigators believe.

After the killing, Rosenkrantz fled to Stockton, where he hid before surrendering July 23 at the urging of his two lawyers and a psychiatrist, police said.

Under questioning from Richard Plotin, one of the defense attorneys, Wielkie testified that Rosenkrantz said he left home because his parents were angry at the revelation that he was a homosexual.

The deputy testified that Rosenkrantz said angrily that his younger brother and Redman “turned my life around 180 degrees.”

Reading from a transcript of the conversation, Plotin asked: “Did Rosenkrantz say, ‘I don’t even understand why I did this. I don’t know why I did what I did?’ ”

“Yes,” Wielkie replied.

Receipt for Rifle

Another witness, Kurt Gardner of Canoga Park, Rosenkrantz’s co-worker at a Woodland Hills pizza parlor, testified that, on June 26 or 27, Rosenkrantz showed him receipts for an Uzi rifle and ammunition.

“He said that he was angry at Steven Redman. He mentioned why, and that he was going to kill him and that he was angry at his brother and was going to kill him, too,” Gardner said.

In other testimony, Jon Green, a Mission Hills private detective, said he was driving slowly on Las Virgenes Road on June 28, and saw two men standing by a sports car blocking another car. Police said Rosenkrantz had waited for Redman, then blocked the road.

One of the men “began to fall backward,” Green testified, and “I saw the defendant standing and I saw a weapon, a rifle.”

John Walker, a concrete contractor working at a site nearby, testified that he saw the body and chased a car leaving the scene down the Ventura Freeway at speeds up to 85 m.p.h. The other car got away, but he wrote down its license number and gave it to police, Walker said. Police said the number was that of Rosenkrantz’s car.

Rosenkrantz did not testify at the hearing.