Plea Bargain Reached in Slaying : Suspect Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter of His Male Lover

A former nursing home aide charged with killing his homosexual lover in 1983 and discarding his dismembered body in Mexico has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a plea bargain worked out with prosecutors.

Bobby Lynn Snyder, 33, originally was charged with murder in the July 15, 1983, shooting death of his live-in lover, Elburn D. Shroll, during an argument by the Big Tujunga Wash in Sylmar.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Myron Jenkins, who was prosecuting the case against Snyder, said Snyder allegedly had confessed to Mexican police that he shot Shroll and buried his body in Mexico. But problems with locating several witnesses in Mexico and convincing Mexican police to allow one of their detectives to devote several months to testifying against Snyder might have jeopardized the prosecution of the case, Jenkins said.

As a result, he said, prosecutors decided on Tuesday to offer a plea bargain to Snyder, who has been acting as his own attorney, allowing him to plead guilty to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter. Jenkins said Snyder will be ordered to serve six years in state prison when he appears for sentencing before San Fernando Superior Court Judge Dana Senit Henry on Dec. 3.

Jenkins said Snyder told Mexican police that he became enraged with Shroll, who shared a house with him in Bell, when Shroll, 52, began criticizing him for having a girlfriend. Snyder told authorities that he and Shroll were driving in the Sylmar area, arguing, when he stopped the car near the Big Tujunga Wash, according to Jenkins.

Jenkins said that it was there that Snyder shot Shroll three times, killing him. Jenkins said Snyder told authorities he returned to the site with a friend, Danny Fleenor, who helped him drive the body to a remote area between Rosarito Beach and Ensenada in Baja California.

According to Jenkins, the two men reportedly buried Shroll’s head, feet and hands in a cattle pasture, then dumped the rest of the body in a ravine about three miles farther south.

Prosecutors dropped a charge of being accomplice to the murder after the fact against Fleenor after the man testified against Snyder at a preliminary hearing last year.

Jenkins said some of the physical evidence prosecutors planned to use against Snyder, including one of the three bullets that killed Shroll and some of the bloody clothing Mexican officers found in Snyder’s car during a routine traffic stop in Tijuana the day after the shooting, has disappeared as it changed hands within the Mexican system.