Slain Man’s Plan to Return to Anaheim Proved Too Late

John Heinz, 20, returned home to Anaheim to be buried this week, slain only five months after he left home for the first time to attend college.

One of his roommates has been charged with shooting Heinz several times after an argument over upkeep of their rented house in San Bernardino. Another roommate has been charged with helping to bury the body and cover up the murder.

A third roommate led police to Heinz’s grave, in the Devil Canyon area north of San Bernardino. Investigators said one or both of the suspects told the third roommate about the crime and where the body was buried and that he waited “several days” before informing police. One source said he waited two weeks.

“(Heinz and the accused murderer) were arguing about household chores--cleaning up the house and purchasing food,” said Sgt. Wayne Smith of the San Bernardino Police Department’s homicide and missing-persons detail. “(Heinz) was complaining. It was not a real hostile-type thing. I don’t think it was an ongoing thing.

“The shooting happened several minutes after the argument ended. . . . There was an argument, and several minutes later a gun was produced and the victim was shot.”

Investigators have seized a .22-caliber rifle as the possible murder weapon.

Heinz, a nephew of Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher, was buried Tuesday after a funeral in Anaheim attended by an estimated 800 persons.

As a memorial, friends painted Heinz’s name on the stadium bleachers at Anaheim High. Heinz attended the school for two years.

The two suspects remained in jail Friday, unable to make bail, police said.

Robert Dalton Rush, 21, of Blue Jay is charged with the shooting. His bail has been set at $1 million. Thomas Marc Hoy, 25, of Rialto is charged as an accessory to murder, and his bail is $250,000.

Both were identified as students at California State University, San Bernardino. Police refused to identify the roommate who led them to the grave site.

The victim’s parents, Raymond and Helen Heinz, said their son moved to San Bernardino last February to attend San Bernardino Valley College and study criminal justice. He wanted to become a police officer and take charge of police dogs, they said.

Heinz moved into a house in San Bernardino rented by four men he had known casually through a mutual friend, his parents said. All were attending college, either part time or full time, they said.

Soon, however, Heinz was making plans to return home to Anaheim, his parents said. His move was only two weeks away when one roommate--the one who later led police to the grave--telephoned Heinz’s parents, asking whether they knew of Heinz’s whereabouts.

The roommate said Heinz had not been seen for several days. But what was most alarming, his parents said, was that Heinz had left behind his dog, Clea. That, they said, indicated something was amiss, for Heinz seldom went anywhere without his dog. When he did leave her behind, he always made provisions for her care, they said.

The family filed a missing-person report with police in Anaheim and San Bernardino, then hired a private investigator to help.

Two weeks later, the case took a more serious turn. Heinz’s compact pickup truck was found, apparently abandoned with keys inside, in a Riverside shopping center parking lot. The San Bernardino police reassigned the case from the missing persons officer to a homicide investigator.

Raymond Heinz said he and his family were doing all they could to help--mainly printing and distributing posters with Heinz’s photograph and an offer of a $5,000 reward for information.

Various family members repeatedly visited the house and talked with the roommates, if only “just to be there,” his mother said.

Conversations With Suspects

They repeatedly spoke with the men now charged in their son’s murder, but they did not suspect them at the time, Raymond Heinz said. Later, he said, “my daughter told me she noticed that when she asked them questions, they’d look at each other. But we didn’t pick up on it.”

On July 31, two weeks after discovery of the abandoned truck, one of the roommates walked into the police station and told what he knew, police said. The body was discovered and the suspects arrested the same day.

Last Tuesday, funeral services were held for Heinz in St. Boniface Catholic Church, Anaheim.

On Friday, his parents, sitting in the dining room of the house where they’ve lived since before their son was born, talked about how close he had come to escaping the danger.

He had planned to look for a house in Orange County to share with some cousins and to transfer to a college here, they said. He had already made preparations.

“Another couple of weeks and he’d have been home,” his mother said.