Living a Lie : Couple Appeared Happy, but Wife’s Violent Death, Husband’s Suicide Create Troubling Mystery

To outsiders, Everett and Betty Stumbaugh seemed happy with each other--somewhat secretive, to be sure, a bit odd perhaps--but nothing to make one suspect that he would strangle her, break her neck and then fake an auto accident to cover up the murder.

But that apparently is what he did in the early morning hours of Aug. 12, investigators say.

Two weeks later, as authorities were closing in, Everett Stumbaugh shot himself.

In the aftermath of those deaths, the untroubled relationship seen by neighbors and associates has proved to be a lie.

Family members on Betty Stumbaugh’s side say, according to investigators, that she was extraordinarily difficult to live with--fearful of showing her age (she was nearly 12 years older than Everett), demanding, selfish and critical of her husband’s abilities as a breadwinner.

‘A Spoiled Child’

“She was a bitch,” investigators say her daughter told them.

“A spoiled child . . . a spoiled woman” was how her mother described her, investigators said.

Stumbaugh, an insurance agent, was in trouble financially, according to investigators, business associates and a source familiar with his finances.

He reneged on thousands of dollars in debts in the last two years, the financial source said. His $180,000 house in Redondo Beach had been in and out of foreclosure proceedings. An insurance company he had represented for five years had just told him to get lost.

His prospects were bleak. He owed an additional $200,000 to creditors, investigators said.

And his wife, he told a policeman investigating the accident, was likely to live into her 90s. Women in her family did.

Killing his wife would go a long way to curing both of Stumbaugh’s problems, investigators theorize.

She would be off his back. And the mortgage insurance policy on his house would pay off the outstanding balance--about $140,000--if either he or his wife died.

Wrote Letters

Shortly after Stumbaugh pushed his silver 1982 Datsun station wagon--his wife’s corpse strapped inside--off a 150-foot cliff in Palos Verdes Estates, he wrote letters to two insurance companies. Sheriff’s Homicide Detectives Charles Riordan and Charles Araujo discovered them after the suicide. One notified the mortgage insurance company that his wife had died. The other told his automobile insurance company that there had been an accident.

Despite the motives and physical evidence that Stumbaugh apparently used some sort of cloth to strangle his wife, leaving no clear marks from fingers, investigators still are not sure that he planned to kill his wife. They may never know.

“We cannot say it was premeditated,” said Palos Verdes Estates Detective George Hanes.

There are no witnesses to the struggle that took place several hours before the staged accident--a struggle in which Betty Stumbaugh was strangled and her neck broken, according to the coroner’s report, .

Heat of a Fight

Hanes said Betty Stumbaugh’s injuries could have been inflicted in the heat of a fight, rather than in a premeditated attack. “A person could be strangled by their own nightclothes,” he said.

Araujo said he hoped that telling the Stumbaugh’s story would discourage others from looking upon murder as a solution to domestic difficulties.

Betty Stumbaugh was born Feb. 27, 1920, in Los Angeles. Everett Leon Stumbaugh was born Dec. 15, 1931.

He was raised in Idaho as an orphan and little is known about his early life or education. She grew up in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, married Bennie Montoya as a teen-ager, had two children and divorced in the mid-1950s.

Everett Stumbaugh mentioned serving in Army during the Korean War, according to neighbor Luis Klancar.

Investigators said Stumbaugh and his wife met in the 1950s at the Los Angeles Times, where Everett worked as a bundler, tying stacks of newspapers, and she worked in the classified advertising department.

In the mid-1960s, the two moved to the 8700 block of Yorktown Avenue, a neighborhood just north of Los Angeles International Airport.

Ethel Siegel, who lived next door to them for more than 20 years, remembers them as aloof but nice people.

“They got along beautifully,” she said, adding that she found it hard to credit accounts that Everett Stumbaugh had killed his wife. “Dear Betty. I can’t believe anybody could be so mean,” she said.

Two Convictions

In the late 1960s, Everett Stumbaugh was arrested and convicted twice on morals charges, Araujo said. In 1967, he was convicted of soliciting for prostitution. In 1968, he was convicted on lewd behavior. Araujo did not have details of the cases.

Siegel noted a few oddities.

Betty Stumbaugh never drove anywhere. On her walks home from stores, she frequently told Siegel that men were following her and she asked Siegel to watch after she went into her house. Siegel said she never saw anyone.

Everett was a 32nd-degree Mason, the next-to-highest ranking, investigators learned, and the couple’s social life revolved around lodge activities. After their house was burglarized twice, Betty Stumbaugh kept her jewelry in a safe deposit box, Siegel recalls.

Whenever there was a big do--usually a Masonic affair--Betty would lower her voice, look around and then confide in Siegel: “I am going to get my jewelry because we are going out.”

Betty always cared about her appearance, Siegel said.

In 1970, her daughter told investigators, Betty had an eye-lift and in 1975, a face lift. Siegel said Betty occasionally came outside in the morning with Scotch tape still stuck to her forehead--a practice some people try to minimize the formation of frown lines.

Her daughter, who declined to be interviewed, told investigators that Betty was so worried about appearing old that she recently denied having a daughter who was 49.

Key to Investigation

Her vanity, the investigators said, later became important to the investigation.

By the mid-1980s, the neighborhood was changing ethnically, and the Stumbaughs decided to move, Siegel said. They settled in a hillside area of Redondo Beach and kept to themselves, neighbors said.

Each morning, Everett, who worked in his house, would walk down the street, carrying insurance forms to copy.

Neighbor Edith Marks said she frequently saw him on these trips and the two engaged in idle banter that she found somehow unnerving.

“He seemed to know everything about everybody but no one knew about him,” Marks said. “We used to talk in a nice, friendly manner. I didn’t know what it was all about. I didn’t even know he was in insurance.”

Jan Francisco, a neighbor across the street, works for a title insurance company and looked up the records on the Stumbaugh’s home after the suicide. She discovered that he had paid about 10% down and thought it unusual that someone his age would put down only a minimal amount.

Francisco is one of the few people outside of family and investigators who ever saw the inside of the Stumbaugh home. She and her husband Ted were invited there July 4, 1985, to watch fireworks from the Stumbaughs’ balcony.

Doll Collection

The house was immaculate, she remembers. Betty Stumbaugh had a collection of dolls.

‘She had it spread all over the house,” Francisco said. “I found it strange for a woman her age--each chair, each couch.”

Francisco, who said she liked Betty Stumbaugh but not Everett, invited the couple to a Christmas party.

“You’re inviting me?” she remembers Everett saying.

“Well, I had to think about it,” she replied.

The lukewarm invitation was not accepted, and Everett Stumbaugh did not talk to her for six months, she said.

Everett Stumbaugh’s financial picture apparently worsened once he moved to Redondo Beach.

In January, 1985, Security Pacific National Bank wrote off a debt of Stumbaugh for an amount that could not be determined, according to the source familiar with his finances. In August, 1985, Great Western Savings wrote off a $3,000 debt.

In April of this year, Stumbaugh was late with his payment to California Federal Savings & Loan, which held the mortgage on his house in Redondo Beach. In May, the house went in and out of foreclosure proceedings.

Calls Unanswered

It was about this time that Del Sevre, marketing manager for Pacific National Insurance, began hearing complaints from their customers that Stumbaugh, who represented them, was not returning their phone calls.

Sevre said he left numerous messages on Stumbaugh’s answering machine and sent letters. None were answered.

Things came to a head in the beginning of the summer.

Sevre said he drove from the Santa Ana office to Redondo Beach to try to contact Stumbaugh.

“I knocked on his door,” he said. “I thought I had seen a man go in there when I parked my car.” There was no answer. Sevre went off to a restaurant.

“I had a cup of coffee and called him from the restaurant and again no response,” he said. “I went out there again. I thought I heard a dryer going in the garage and again no response.”

Sevre said he left a business card in the mail slot.

“I never did get a response,” he said. He canceled Stumbaugh’s contract with Pacific National shortly after that.

In July, Imperial Savings & Loan wrote off a $2,000 debt, according to the source.

Money was a major issue between the Stumbaughs, according to relatives.

Betty Stumbaugh’s daughter said they had an argument once while she was driving with them.

“You’ll never make as much money as Bennie,” she recalled her mother saying in a reference to her first husband.

The daughter said Everett Stumbaugh’s stricken expression showed the barb had hit home.

After Betty Stumbaugh died, her daughter found two phone numbers written on sheet music that she collected from her mother’s house. Araujo said he called the numbers. One was a hot line for battered women and the other was the telephone number of Haven House, a shelter for abused women.

Sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. Aug. 12--two hours before Everett Stumbaugh said the accident occurred--Betty Stumbaugh died, according to the coroner’s office.

The coroner’s office, which established the time of death by sensitive temperature measurements, found telltale markings indicating that she had been strangled and that her neck had been broken.

Investigators found spots of her blood on rugs in the second story of the couple’s house and on the stairs. Her injuries--a blow to the head and on her hand--indicate that she did not die without a struggle, Araujo said.

The coroner’s office said the injuries could not have been inflicted in the car accident.

Everett Stumbaugh, a six-footer who weighed more than 200 pounds, could have broken the neck of Betty Stumbaugh, who was 5-feet-4 and weighed 130 pounds, Araujo said.

Or, the investigator said, she could have broken free as he tried to strangle her and then broken her neck in a fall down the stairs.

Blood that sank into the concrete of the garage floor told investigators that Everett probably dragged her body into his enclosed garage. A blood spot on an office chair in the garage suggests that he propped her up there briefly.

Discovered Wreck

Stumbaugh told investigators that he and his wife left their house about 5:30 a.m. to watch porpoises off Paseo del Mar in Palos Verdes Estates. About 7:30 a.m., two youngsters and an adult were walking down a dirt road to the ocean on the way to do some early morning snorkeling when they came across the car.

Betty Stumbaugh was dead. Everett was discovered on a ledge just below the top of the cliff, apparently unconscious.

Investigators said he first told them that at 6 a.m., as he was driving south, a black pickup truck rammed him from behind and forced him off the road and over the cliff. He said he was not wearing a seat belt and managed to get clear, but his wife, who was wearing a belt, did not get out in time.

A few minutes later, investigators said, he told them the pickup came from the front.

From the beginning, Hanes of the Palos Verdes Estates police department said he sensed something was wrong because Stumbaugh did not appear angry at the driver of the pickup truck.

“You kind of expect people to want to get even,” he said.

The California Highway Patrol’s Major Accident Investigation Team was called in, and then sheriff’s homicide detectives.

Disturbing Evidence

The accident didn’t add up.

Tire marks indicated that the car had skidded to a complete stop before going over the cliff. There was a footprint in the tire track, although Stumbaugh claimed that he had been unconscious after the accident. (Doctors discovered no injuries that would have knocked him out.)

Down below, another footprint was discovered and when Betty Stumbaugh was found, her right arm was strapped underneath the lap band of the seat belt. Her arm was injured but a close examination of the injuries revealed that they could not have come from the crash, the coroner’s office decided later.

Investigators could find no paint scratches from the pickup truck on the Datsun. The station wagon’s gas cap was missing, although the hinged lid was closed. Investigators theorize that Stumbaugh hoped the Datsun would catch fire and explode in the accident.

One of the most striking discrepancies was that Betty Stumbaugh did not have her false eyelashes on and wore no makeup. Her daughter told investigators she would never leave the house like that.

Riordan and Araujo took great care not to tip off Stumbaugh that they were investigating the death of his wife as a homicide.

“We would meet the family at out-of-the-way coffee shops,” Araujo said.

Neighbor Luis Klancar spoke to Stumbaugh three days after his wife’s death and asked him why he gave conflicting accounts about the direction of the truck.

“I was confused,” Stumbaugh replied.

“I didn’t believe. I looked him in the face. If this was an accident, he would have a different face,” Klancar said.

Stumbaugh apparently saw the doubt.

“Do you think I did it on purpose?” he said.

Klancar said he responded by shrugging.

Couldn’t Wait

On the way to his wife’s funeral, he asked Klancar to accompany him but did not have time to wait for his neighbor to shower and change clothes.

When he returned, Klancar said, Stumbaugh was upset that his wife’s relatives had not spoken to him.

It was during this period that Stumbaugh wrote the letters to the insurance companies, but he apparently thought he had outfoxed the police.

Stumbaugh did not clean off a number of blood spots. Investigators later found the gas-tank cap on a shelf in the garage. They found the shoes he had worn that day neatly arranged with other shoes in his closet.

But about Aug. 21, Stumbaugh realized that some investigation was under way. He went to see his wrecked car at a towing company and was told that he could not on the orders of homicide detectives.

After that, Detective Hanes said, Stumbaugh made numerous calls, trying to find out what was going on.

Riordan and Araujo worried that he might get rid of evidence and speeded up the investigation in order to get a search warrant. They were so anxious that on Aug. 26, they kept Municipal Court Judge Frances Hourigan, who was on his way to a Dodgers game, until 7 p.m. to sign the search warrant.

The investigators went to Stumbaugh’s house at 7 a.m. Aug. 28.

They rang the bell. No answer. They called on the phone. No answer.

‘Leave Me Alone’

Almost an hour later, Riordan saw Stumbaugh on the balcony in the back and gestured for him to come down. The ensuing conversation was taped.

“Leave me alone. Can’t you see that I am in mourning?” Stumbaugh said.

“We understand that, but we have to talk to you,” Riordan said. “We have been here since 7 a.m. We called you. It is 7:55 a.m. We can’t continue like this. Please let us in.”

“Well, all right,” Stumbaugh said.

The investigators went around.

On the tape, there is the short, sharp snap of a shot.

The investigators rushed in, hoping to hear a confession.

Stumbaugh had placed the barrel of a 30.06 rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

He was dead when they found him.