The Region - News from Oct. 12, 1986

Murder charges have been dismissed for a second and apparently final time against a drifter with a history of mental illness who had been accused of stabbing his elderly parents and rigging their Canoga Park home to explode. Robert L. Spitz, 44, clasped his hands and lowered his head when the second judge in four weeks, Van Nuys Municipal Judge Robert Wallerstein, concluded that the evidence against him was too weak to hold him for trial. Spitz was later transferred from County Jail to Mid-Valley Hospital in Van Nuys for a psychiatric evaluation. He has a right to a release hearing within three days. Spitz’s family claims, and his defense attorney confirms, that he has experienced mental problems for many years and has been hospitalized in psychiatric facilities on several occasions. Prosecutors admitted that their case in the February deaths of Marvin and Myrtle Spitz was based exclusively on circumstantial evidence.