Youth Denies Murdering 2 in Pasadena

Robert Gregg Butler, a college senior and nationally ranked track star, pleaded innocent Thursday to two counts of murder with special circumstances in the slayings of a popular Pasadena high school teacher and a student.

After Butler’s arraignment in Pasadena Municipal Court, friends and relatives expressed outrage and disbelief that the 22-year-old suspect could be implicated in the murders.

“He’s a great guy, and he’s a great athlete,” Cameron Unruh, Butler’s roommate at Azusa Pacific University, said Thursday. “It seems like (the police) are really reaching for something and they just picked him.”

Pasadena police and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office have refused to comment on their evidence against Butler, or on a motive for the killings.

Butler is accused of the Dec. 12 shooting deaths of his close friend, Robert Jones, 47, head of the social sciences department and an assistant track coach at John Muir High School, and Ronald McClendon, 17, a student of Jones’ who had been staying at the teacher’s home because of family troubles.

Both victims had been shot in the head and body, apparently as they slept in separate rooms at Jones’ home in Pasadena.

Butler, who graduated from Muir in 1981, became friends with Jones in 1983 and lived with him for a short time, police said.

The teacher acted as an “informal guardian,” police said, and Butler often visited Jones after enrolling at Point Loma College in San Diego. He transferred to Azusa Pacific last September.

Jones, who taught in the Pasadena school system for 25 years, was a respected and admired teacher at Muir, known for his commitment to students and for often taking in troubled youngsters who had no place to go. Jones had provided such friendship to Butler and had given him his car, a maroon Buick, friends of the suspect said.

At the time of the shootings, no one, including police, could understand why someone would kill Jones and McClendon. McClendon, a model student and a junior varsity basketball player, was well-liked by his classmates and teachers.

In the weeks following their deaths, police had said there were no clues and no suspects. Jones’ home had not been ransacked and nothing was missing, but the back door was found unlocked and ajar.

On Sunday night, a month after the killings, Pasadena police arrested Butler at the Azusa apartment he shared with Unruh.

Unruh said Thursday that police had questioned Butler continually since the murders.

“They were calling all the time and coming by the house unannounced,” he said. “They would wait for Robbie at work and at school.”

Butler worked at a local elementary school as a teacher’s aide, Unruh said, while studying police science at Azusa Pacific. He had recently passed written and physical tests for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Academy and was planning to become a law officer, the roommate said.

Unruh and other friends of Butler say they were also questioned at length by police.

“They asked a lot of questions about whether or not Robbie had keys to Jones’ house,” Unruh said.

Chenynene Brinkley, a senior at Muir and a friend of the victims and Butler, said police questioned her at school last week.

“They pulled this scarf out of a manila folder,” she said. “They wanted to know if I had ever seen it before, and I said I hadn’t.”

Brinkley said police told her the scarf was found on Jones’ kitchen floor when the murders were discovered. She said police also asked her about a black sports car seen by neighbors on the night Jones and McClendon were killed.

According to his family, Butler was attending Azusa Pacific on a full athletic scholarship. He was ranked second in the nation in the high hurdles by the National Assn. for Intercollegiate Athletics, said John Wallace, dean of students at the university.

Members of Butler’s family, who spoke only briefly to reporters on Thursday, said he is a kind and gentle young man, shy and almost timid in demeanor. They said they believe he is incapable of hurting anyone and that he has no criminal background.

“Robbie is the finest young man you can find,” said a woman who identified herself as Butler’s aunt. “He doesn’t know how to use a gun. He’s never even held a gun in his entire life.”

Butler is being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for Wednesday. If convicted under special circumstances because of the multiple killings, Butler could receive the death penalty.