Murder Charged to All Four Suspects in Detective’s Ambush

Daniel S. Jenkins was accused by prosecutors Wednesday of being the masked man who ambushed and murdered a police detective last week in Canoga Park as vengeance for the officer’s testimony against him in a robbery and assault case.

As Jenkins, 30, and three other men were formally charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said it was Jenkins who actually pulled the trigger late last Thursday--the evening before he was found guilty in the robbery case and he was jailed again.

His alleged conspirators, who were arrested on Saturday and who appeared Wednesday with Jenkins in Van Nuys Municipal Court in handcuffs and chains, are Duane Moody, 27; Ruben A. (Tony) Moss, 24, and Voltaire Williams, 22.

All were charged with three special circumstance allegations that would make it possible for prosecutors to seek the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole if the suspects are convicted.

The special allegations were that the men killed a policeman, that they committed a killing in retaliation against a witness in a criminal trial and that they lay in wait for their victim.

Detective Thomas Williams, 42, a 13-year police veteran, was gunned down by automatic weapon fire last Thursday as he picked up his 6-year-old son, Ryan, from a church child care center in the 7600 block of Glade Avenue, Canoga Park.

The officer shouted at his son to duck. The boy complied and was not hit.

Neither police nor members of the district attorney’s office would say what convinced them that Jenkins was the killer. Lt. Ed Henderson, head of the major crimes division of the Los Angeles Police Department, said that to elaborate on the connection now might prompt defense attorneys to claim that police had prejudiced the case.

But the criminal complaint filed in court alleged that the four conspired to kill the police officer. It was alleged that six days before the slaying, Jenkins gave a handgun to co-defendant Voltaire Williams, who took an unidentified person to the Glade Avenue location to point out the off-duty detective.

Investigators have said they believe that Jenkins put out a $10,000 contract on the detective’s life in an effort to prevent his testimony in the robbery case, but that the Oct. 25 attempt failed when the prospective killer backed out.

It was after Detective Williams actually testified last Thursday, they contend, that Jenkins himself became the assassin--in what Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said could only be an act of vengeance.

A detective close to the investigation confided that police have a witness to the purported conspiracy, but he would not say whether that witness is one of the four defendants.

Gates already had disclosed that a Mac-10 machine pistol was recovered Tuesday. The complaint alleged that defendant Moody carried that gun from his residence the day before the killing.

At the request of defense attorneys, Van Nuys Superior Court Commissioner Patricia Schwartz continued the arraignment until next Friday, at which time the four defendants are to enter pleas. Each is charged with one count of murder and one count of conspiracy to murder.

Neither prosecutors nor detectives would say whether they think that any of the other three men were present at the time of Detective Williams’ shooting, but, Henderson said, the three other defendants, if they “aided and abetted” Jenkins, would not have had to be present at the shooting to be charged with murder.

All four were ordered held without bail, but attorneys for all but Jenkins asked for bail hearings. Schwartz is to listen to arguments today.

The testimony for which Detective Williams was believed to have been killed was in Jenkins’ trial for the October, 1984, holdup of a North Hollywood movie theater. The robbery victim, theater employee George Carpenter, supplied a getaway car license number, which was traced to Jenkins.

Shot Four Times

Last July, in a crime that has never been solved, Carpenter was shot four times by an unidentified assailant as he sat in a bar a few blocks from the theater. He survived, but changed his name and moved out of the state. He returned to testify at Jenkins’ trial.

One prosecutor said detectives had asked that Jenkins’ bail be revoked the day after the July attack on Carpenter, but that Carpenter had “specifically excluded” Jenkins as being the shooter.

“It’s just one of those tragic things,” the prosecutor said, “that until the second person on the case (Detective Williams) was shot we couldn’t do it (get the bail revoked). “I don’t think the judge would have granted it.”

Jenkins has a lengthy arrest record. A probation report showed that between March 25, 1975, and Feb. 16, 1979, he was arrested 11 times by police in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Gardena as well as by sheriff’s deputies on charges that included grand theft auto, burglary and receiving stolen property.

In each of those cases, the report said, charges were either never filed or were dismissed in court.

Again Arrested

In May, 1979, he was arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto, burglary and receiving stolen property, but he was allowed to plead guilty to only two counts of the latter charge.

The probation report, filed before his sentencing in that case, noted that a victim who had testified against Jenkins in another car theft case had been threatened by an unidentified man in a hallway outside the courtroom.

Jenkins was born in Kansas City, Kan., on Aug. 3, 1955, the fourth of five children. His father died when he was 3 years old. He dropped out of Manual Arts High School while in his senior year, worked for a carpet cleaning firm and then as a mechanic’s helper.

In May, 1974, he pleaded guilty to cruelty to an animal after he fatally shot a friend’s dog when the animal chased him, according to the probation report. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail and two years probation.

A Southwest Division officer described him as a professional car thief, well known to officers and believed responsible for many of the auto thefts and auto burglaries in that area.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Sandy Banks, Bob Baker, Jack Jones and Janet Rae-Dupree