Son Allegedly Schemed at Pizza Parlor to Kill Mother

The Canoga Park teen-ager accused of murdering his mother and setting her car afire with his half brother inside plotted the crime with two of his friends at a pizza parlor, prosecutors said Thursday.

Torran Lee Meier, 16, along with Matthew Adam Jay, 18, of Woodland Hills, and Richard Allan Parker, 23, of Antelope Valley, “planned out the whole thing,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Diamond said Thursday.

Diamond’s accusation came the same day murder charges were filed against Jay and Parker. Meier was charged Wednesday with murder and attempted murder, two days after the body of Meier’s mother, Shirley Rizk, 34, was found in her burned-out automobile at the bottom of a steep Malibu slope.

She had been strangled and the car doused with gasoline before it was pushed down the hill with 8-year-old Rory Rizk, bound and blindfolded, inside, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said. They said Rory escaped unharmed and flagged down a passing motorist.

Diamond also said that, after the Sunday night slaying, at least two of the suspects tried to poison Rory by offering him a peanut butter sandwich and a soft drink laced with snail bait and rat poison.

After Rory refused the snack, he was driven to the Malibu site in Rizk’s 1979 Ford Thunderbird, which held the woman’s body in its trunk, Diamond said.

Rendezvous at House

Meier, a computer hacker and student at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, is believed by sheriff’s deputies to have met Jay and Parker earlier Sunday at a Canoga Park pizzeria. After their meeting, Meier returned to the home he shared with his mother and half brother and let the two young men into the house, deputies said.

Neighbors reported overhearing Rizk, a department manager at Best Products Co. in Northridge, and Meier bickering Sunday night.

“We overheard them arguing, something about she wanted $50 from his paycheck,” neighbor Patricia Emery told a reporter.

Sheriff’s deputies allege that Jay and Parker hid behind a door at the Rizk house in the 23900 block of Archwood Road. Late Sunday night, they were joined by Meier, and the trio held down Rizk and strangled her, said prosecutor Diamond, who filed the charges against Jay and Parker.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jerry Bowes, who is prosecuting Meier, said the weapon could have been “a belt, a rope, a necktie, we just don’t know.”

Officials believe the woman’s body was then stuffed into the trunk of her automobile and driven, along with the boy, to a remote turnout along Malibu Canyon Road. The dead woman was then placed behind the steering wheel next to Rory, they say.

Rory was questioned by deputies after being treated for smoke inhalation and released from Westlake Hospital.

Meier and Parker were arrested several hours later after they were seen driving Meier’s car on Los Virgenes Road near the Ventura Freeway, Sheriff’s Detective Russell Uloth said. The two were returning to the scene of the car dumping when they were arrested, the detective added.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Times Staff Writer Jan Klunder contributed to this story.

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Jay, who lives with his parents, was arrested Wednesday night while attending a night class at El Camino Real High School, Uloth said.

Parker was staying with a foster brother in Woodland Hills at the time of the slaying, Uloth said.

Meier was scheduled to be arraigned in Sylmar Juvenile Court Thursday morning, but his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Patrick McGarry, said he needed more time to prepare for the case and obtained a postponement until Oct. 30.

Prosecutor Bowes said he intends to ask that Meier be tried as an adult, citing “the planning and preparation that was necessary prior to the commission of the crime.”

Meier is being held without bail in Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

Jay and Parker, whose preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 29, are being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail. They were arraigned in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

Each was charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Stormy Relationship

Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Rene Laporte described Meier’s relationship with his mother as stormy. “He is a fairly intelligent person who apparently had some real difficulty communicating and living with his mother,” Laporte said.

Meier’s attorney, McGarry, who spent three hours interviewing the youth Wednesday and Thursday, said the suspect, who skipped a grade in junior high school, is “a very bright and a very handsome young man who is extremely articulate.”

Neighbor Margaret Voivod described Meier as a “computer whiz kid” who had two computers in his bedroom and used to send computer messages to friends in the neighborhood. She said he held a part-time job as an attendant at a Union Oil service station in Canoga Park.

Marsha Caple, a former neighbor who said she had known Shirley Rizk for 10 years, described Meier as a youth who was “very, very bright and kind, who got along with his mother. There had to be some great change before Torry would ever have laid a hand on his mother.” But neighbor Emery said Rizk frequently shouted and berated her 16-year-old son in front of other residents in the middle-class neighborhood.

Emery said Rizk occasionally had Meier mow the front lawn at midnight by flashlight. At other times, she said, she had her son fix the roof in the middle of the night.