Man Is Questioned in Death of Officer’s Wife : Fullerton Police Arrest Transient Near Lot Where Woman’s Body Was Found

An 18-year-old transient has been arrested as a suspect in the death of Marie Andrea Malmgreen, who was found dead in the back seat of her Cadillac in Fullerton last month, police in that city said Wednesday.

Detectives stopped Scott Michael Katzin for questioning late Tuesday a few blocks from Cal State Fullerton, near a lot behind an apartment complex where the body was found. Capt. Don Bankhead said Katzin was taken to the police station for further questioning and was booked into the Fullerton City Jail, where he was being held on $250,000 bail.

Bankhead said Katzin would be released if he is not charged by Friday.

“We’ll either prove that he did do it or prove that he didn’t do it, one way or another,” Bankhead said. He said fingerprints found in the Cadillac have not been compared with Katzin’s.

“I’m hoping this evidence can put him in the car,” Bankhead said of the fingerprints.

Katzin apparently is homeless and has been for some time, Bankhead said. He said the transient apparently once lived in the Brea area, and his parents once lived in Orange County. Police said Katzin knew no one living in any of the apartment complexes in the area where the car was found, a few blocks from Cal State Fullerton. Police said Malmgreen “had no reason to be there” either.

Katzin was stopped for questioning about 10:45 p.m. by detectives who were canvassing the neighborhood for leads.

“He was just wandering around at the time,” Bankhead said. “The investigators working the case located the suspect and, in interviewing him, felt there was more to it than he was telling them. And so they took him to the station, and in the interview what he said led them to believe he was the suspect.

“We haven’t found any evidence on him that linked him to the murder,” Bankhead said, adding that Katzin did not confess.

The 38-year-old Malmgreen was living with her husband, a Los Angeles police detective, and two children in Brea when she disappeared April 22. After she missed two appointments that day, a description of her pale blue Cadillac Biarritz was broadcast over police radio frequencies.

A Fullerton police sergeant on patrol discovered her car April 30 in a dirt lot among other vehicles behind an apartment complex at Bastanchury and Associated roads. Because the body was badly decomposed and there was dust on the car, investigators concluded it had been there several days.

Katzin was “picked up . . . close to where the vehicle was found,” Bankhead said.

An autopsy showed that Malmgreen had not been shot or stabbed. The cause of death has not been determined. Police said Wednesday that they still do not know when Malmgreen died.

Her purse is missing, and none of its contents have been found, Bankhead said. He said detectives have not found “any physical evidence to link” Katzin to the murder.

Investigators have said they doubt that the killing was connected to her husband’s work as a Los Angeles Police Department detective. The husband, Russell Malmgreen, is a judicial liaison officer in Chief Daryl F. Gates’ office and once had been assigned to the department’s anti-terrorist division.

They said Wednesday that they had not determined a motive in the slaying.

Police refused to provide a physical description of the suspect or to release a photograph of him. Katzin, who turned 18 last month, does not have a California driver license.