Accused Irvine Man, Wife Found Dead in Apparent Suicide Pact

An Irvine businessman who was under investigation for securities fraud in several states and his wife have been found dead, apparently of self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning, a coroner’s spokesman said Monday.

John Carl Parsons, 56, and Ella Marie Parsons, 44, were found dead Sunday, slumped in their 1985 Lincoln Continental in the garage of their home in the Rancho San Joaquin area of Irvine. Neighbors of the couple had called police about 11:30 a.m. to report a car engine running inside the couple’s closed garage, a police spokeswoman said.

When Irvine police officers forced open the garage door, they found a garden hose leading from the car’s exhaust pipe into its interior, said Desk Officer Jewel Gaynor. The two victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

A coroner’s spokesman, who refused to give his name, said an autopsy Monday showed the victims died from inhaling the car’s fumes. He called the deaths a mutual suicide.

“There is nothing suspicious at this point,” Irvine Police Sgt. Gary Shull said Monday. He said he doesn’t expect any further investigation by his department unless some finding by the coroner’s office changes the situation.

But the investigation will remain open until the results of toxicological tests are received, Shull said. The Parsonses’ daughter, whom Shull would not identify by name, said her parents were in poor health. A note found at the scene also mentioned the couple’s frail health, Shull said.

At the time of his death, Parsons, a two-time felon who once sold Alaskan oil leases to Midwestern investors, was awaiting trial on six felony counts stemming from an investigation by the Kansas State Securities Commission.

According to Larry Cook, the commission’s director of enforcement, a judge in Topeka, Kan., early last July ordered Parsons to stand trial on two counts each of securities fraud, sale of unregistered securities and operating as an unregistered securities broker.

Parsons was president of Newport Beach-based Citizens Oil & Gas Co. When he was arrested last September, sources said the operation had been grossing more than $150,000 a week for more than two years.

Cook said a five-month investigation by his department showed that Parsons and his company were selling oil leases based on “misrepresentation of material facts in telephone sales pitches and in advertising material they sent” to prospective clients.

Parsons apparently sold the oil leases in 640-acre blocks for $10 an acre; the federal Bureau of Land Management sells the same leases for $1 an acre.

In 1967, Parsons, then an Arizona resident, was convicted and sent to prison for two years on felony check charges. In 1981, while still residing in Arizona, he was convicted of three felony counts of larceny and one felony count of fraud in connection with an attempted embezzlement of more than $100,000 from a Phoenix manufacturing firm.

Cook said that the U.S. attorney’s office in Pennsylvania was investigating Parsons on charges similar to those filed in Kansas. J. Alan Johnson, U.S. attorney based in Pittsburgh, refused to comment on the case.