‘I Am Not a Murderer’ : San Pedro Resident Returns to Nervous Neighborhood After His Acquittal in Death Case

He walks with a cane and spends much of his time hobbling around his small San Pedro home, which he has shut off from the world with concrete walls, wood fences and palm and yucca trees.

Some of his neighbors call him eccentric; he says they simply don’t understand him.

Two weeks ago, 53-year-old Jaroslav Skoda returned to his home on Kerckhoff Avenue a free man. He had been in jail nine months awaiting trial, accused of murdering a neighbor by shooting him through the heart with a handgun Skoda had strapped to his hip. He defended himself and was acquitted.

Despite the prosecution’s contention that he deliberately shot Stephen Overbey during a heated argument, the Czechoslovakian immigrant maintained he acted in self-defense.

“In no way do I feel remorse,” Skoda said last week as he sat in his home. “I sleep well; I feel well about myself. I don’t think of Mr. Overbey at all.” Later, he added: “I want people to know I am not a murderer.”

Found Innocent

A slight man who speaks with a thick Eastern European accent, Skoda was freed from Los Angeles County Jail three days before Thanksgiving after a jury found him innocent of murdering Overbey, a 27-year-old auto mechanic who lived in an apartment next door to Skoda’s home.

The two men had carried on a bitter feud for a year, often threatening one another and complaining to the police, Skoda said. Last year, Skoda placed Overbey under citizen’s arrest for trespassing on his property. The fatal shooting in February was sparked by an argument that began, according to Skoda, when Overbey shook a steel rod that Skoda was using to build one of the walls around his house, almost causing a concrete block to topple on him.

As he defended himself during his three-week trial before Long Beach Superior Court Judge Charles D. Sheldon, Skoda, a high school graduate, wore dirty sneakers and chose to stay dressed in blue jail coveralls. He carried a plastic bag as a briefcase. He quoted Aristotle to the jurors.

He said he used the jail’s library--not so much to study law books but to use the phone. Most of his knowledge of the law came from earlier dealings with the city attorney’s office, he said.

“He did a very good job. He represented himself well,” Sheldon said. “His legal motions were quite good. He cited the right cases. He is a very intelligent man.”

Skoda’s acquittal, however, has left some of his neighbors uneasy.

“You can imagine that we aren’t too happy about the verdict,” said one woman who asked that her name not be used. “I’m scared. Put it this way. How would you like a man who is capable of killing a person living in your neighborhood?”

Another neighbor, who also asked for anonymity, said: “I may wind up spending a lot of money and moving my family,” adding that he has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years.

Those same neighbors and several others say that most residents on the quiet street have long made it a point to avoid Skoda, who they say has occasionally provoked arguments over politics with a few residents.

Some recall an incident nearly five years ago when he beat a neighborhood dog. During his Municipal Court trial for cruelty to an animal, evidence showed that he beat the dog with his cane and, when the cane broke, a piece of clay pipe. He then threw the animal in a trash can, according to testimony at the trial. Skoda admitted in court that he beat the dog, which had to be put to sleep.

He said he beat the dog because of its incessant barking, describing the animal as a “tool of torture” that prevented him from sleeping. He was convicted on the charge and served about two weeks of a 30-day sentence. His conviction was later overturned by a higher court that ruled the jury had been improperly instructed by the judge, Skoda said.

Skoda said he feels no animosity toward his neighbors. Many, he said, simply do not understand him because of his strong political beliefs and his penchant for privacy, manifested in the eight- and nine-foot-high walls that he began building around his house four or five years ago to keep noise, neighbors and animals from his property.

“I am sort of a hermit, and every hermit is kind of suspicious to others,” he said. “They have the same feelings as a domesticated animal does toward a wild one. They themselves do not know why they are afraid of me.”

Skoda said he has cried since the shooting, shedding tears not for Overbey specifically but for having to kill a human being to protect himself. But he said he will use a gun again for the same purpose if he is forced to.

“If someone tries to hurt me, it could happen again and again and again,” he said. “If nobody tries to hurt me, nobody will get hurt. I have the right to defend myself in any way I can.”

Skoda said he came to the United States in 1968 to escape repression in his native country. On two occasions he was arrested in Czechoslovakia after attempting to illegally leave the country and spent almost three years in prison there, he said.

After arriving in this country, Skoda said, he worked in New York as a dishwasher and then moved to Virginia, Texas and, finally, California, where he landed a job at a scrap metal yard in Burbank. In 1969, he moved to San Pedro to work as a welder at a shipyard and got married a year or so later. Now divorced, he has two children who live with their mother. He lives on disability checks he gets for a hip disorder that requires that he walk with a cane.

Citizen’s Arrest Attempted

His troubles with his neighbor, Skoda said, started in 1983 when he refused to allow Overbey to repair cars in Skoda’s yard and driveway. The two frequently argued, he said, and in May, 1984, he placed his neighbor under citizen’s arrest after he came onto Skoda’s property. The Los Angeles city attorney’s office filed a trespassing charge against Overbey but dropped the charge 15 days before the shooting.

Skoda testified at the murder trial that on the day of the shooting he called police after Overbey shook the steel bar holding the concrete block. Skoda said he then attempted another citizen’s arrest of Overbey by parking a truck in the mechanic’s driveway so he could not leave.

Skoda said he went into his house to lock a sliding glass door after Overbey threatened to come into his yard and at that time put on his gun and holster. When he went back outside and found Overbey tinkering with the truck, he ordered him away from the vehicle, Skoda said.

Skoda said Overbey then ran toward him. When Overbey lunged at him, Skoda said he fired two shots, the first intended as a warning. There were no eyewitnesses.

The jury deliberated a little more than four days before rendering their verdict.

“Most of us really felt it was self-defense,” said Bobbie Speaks, who served as the jury’s foreman. “It was a difficult decision, but we felt good with it.”

Believed Skoda

Violet Parker, who served as an alternate juror, said she believed Skoda when he said he had been bullied by Overbey because of the many complaints Skoda had filed with the police. “You just don’t do that unless something is wrong,” Parker said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Dinko Bozanich, who prosecuted the case, characterized Skoda as a person who was not easily intimidated by anyone.

The prosecutor maintained at the trial that Overbey had also called police and had pulled the ignition coil out of the truck, probably to keep the vehicle there as evidence until police arrived. Since there were no eyewitnesses, he said, it was impossible to say who started the argument.

Angry About Decision

Bozanich argued that Skoda, still angry about the city attorney’s office decision not to prosecute Overbey on the earlier trespassing charge, “baited” Overbey by parking the truck in front of his house. He then retrieved his revolver from the house, went back outside and somehow managed to get Overbey to approach him, Bozanich said.

At the trial, Bozanich argued that Skoda “in effect executed” Overbey. The prosecutor called the shooting a “Clint Eastwood thing.”

“It was a ‘Go ahead and make my day’ type of thing,’ ” Bozanich said.

Since returning home, Skoda said he has kept pretty much to himself, seldom venturing outside his home. He has written letters to a sister in Australia and to his parents in Czechoslovakia, telling them about his acquittal. He works on his book, “The Individualist Manifesto,” in a room furnished with a large bookcase lined with history and philosophy books and cardboard files filled with legal papers.

Imperial Power

He said the nonfiction book, which is subtitled “The Call of the Free,” concerns itself with the government’s executive branch, which, by his definition, includes the city attorney’s office. The branch has assumed imperial powers over citizens, he said.

Despite his prolonged problems with neighbors, Skoda said he has no plans to move. “If somebody doesn’t want me here, they can move away,” he said. “I am not going to budge an inch.”

He also said the .357-caliber Magnum revolver he used to defend himself against Overbey--a gun he purchased from a local sporting goods store three years ago for protection--is still being held as evidence by authorities. It will eventually be returned, he said.

“In the future,” Skoda said, “I will do everything possible not to use the gun.”