Ex-Officer in Prison for Killing Fails in Parole Bid

The state Board of Prison Terms on Friday canceled the parole of former Los Angeles Police Officer Paul Perveler, who with his girlfriend was convicted in 1969 of murdering both of their mates to collect $100,000 in insurance.

The parole panel took its action after hearing new testimony that Perveler had tried unsuccessfully to kill his parents, and three times attempted--also without success--to take the life of his first wife, Lela Halvorson.

The case was the subject of a book, “Till Death Us Do Part,” written by Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Perveler.

Perveler, now 48, was due to be released from prison two years ago but the parole proceedings were tied up in a three-year court battle over technicalities.

Signatures Collected

With the assistance of Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) Halvorson collected 20,000 signatures urging that Perveler be kept in prison.

Perveler’s co-defendant, Kristina Cromwell, who was freed in 1976, was the key witness at a four-day hearing this week at the California Men’s Colony here.

Under questioning by Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Sowders and defense attorney Frank Kocs, she testified for four hours about Perveler’s two murders, and murder attempts, and alleged attempts involving a series of insurance fraud plots in 1966.

Cromwell, who had never previously testified about the crimes, said she conspired with Perveler to fatally shoot her husband, Marlin, and said Perveler told her that he had planned to kill his second wife, Cheryl, even before they were married.

Cromwell also testified that Perveler gave his parents an anniversary gift of a trip to Mexico in 1966, with the intention of killing them between Tijuana and Ensenada. His father, Joseph, actually was shot in the face but survived the attack. He was unable to identify his assailant. Cromwell testified that Perveler ran down his first wife twice with an automobile and once tried to beat her to death.

Perveler sat impassively throughout the hearing and said nothing in his own defense, although he was asked by the board chairman if he wished to speak.

In announcing the panel’s decision to rescind Perveler’s release date, chairman Albert Leddy said that “although he was nearly a model prisoner,” Perveler remains “an unreasonable risk and danger to the public.”

After the hearing, Halvorson said: “I have mixed feelings about the outcome. First, I feel relieved that justice finally was done. But I’m also dismayed that we will have to live a continuing nightmare, since Paul will come up for parole again and again.”

Glenn Cromwell, father of the man Perveler murdered, added, “I feel Perveler should be incarcerated forever, since he changed my life and hopes forever.”

Perveler will be allowed to make a new bid for freedom at a hearing in August, 1987.

He was originally sentenced to be executed, but when California’s capital punishment law was struck down in 1972, his sentence was changed to life imprisonment and he immediately became eligible for parole.

Perveler was a Los Angeles police officer from 1962 to 1963, but was forced to resign because he provided the name of an abortionist to a fellow officer’s pregnant girlfriend. He subsequently worked as a private investigator and insurance claims adjuster. At the time he was arrested for the 1966 crimes, he was operating a bar in Burbank.