2 Ex-LAPD Officers Lose Bid for Separate Trials in Murder-Robbery Case

Two former Los Angeles police officers lost their bid Wednesday to be tried separately on charges of robbing a jewelry store, engaging in a murder-for-insurance plot and acting as contract killers to murder a Northridge man at the behest of his estranged wife.

Defendants Robert Anthony Von Villas, 41, and Richard Herman Ford, 43, listened attentively to the judge’s ruling, which came at the end of a nine-month pretrial hearing in a case that has stumbled along without going to trial for more than three years since the two former Devonshire Division officers were arrested on July 7, 1983.

No Trial Date Set

Superior Court Judge Alexander Williams III set no trial date because defense attorneys made it clear they will appeal several aspects of his ruling.

The case began in 1983 when the two officers were arrested, according to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, “literally three minutes” before they were going to slit the throat of nude dancer Joan Loguercio as she entered a van parked outside the Venus Faire adult bookstore and adult theater in North Hollywood, where she worked.

Investigators determined that Von Villas had befriended the woman and purchased a $100,000 life insurance policy on her, ostensibly to cover a loan he was making to her so she could buy a half-interest in a house owned by her ex-husband.

Jewelry Store Holdup

An informant, Bruce Adams, who was driving the van, told police that Ford and Von Villas said they were going to drug, torture and strangle Loguercio and then drop the body in Hollywood “to make it look like the work of a sex maniac.” The robbery charge stems from the Nov. 22, 1985, holdup of Schaffer and Sons Creative Jewelry in Northridge Fashion Plaza. Three women employees were tied up at gunpoint and the store was robbed of at least $78,000 in diamonds, gold, jewelry and cash.

Adding to the charges already faced by the ex-officers was a grand jury indictment in 1983 charging them with killing Thomas J. Weed, 52, co-owner of a San Fernando Valley allergy-testing laboratory.

The judge took great pains Wednesday in a prepared statement to explain the prolonged delay and cost of the prosecution, now estimated at $1.25 million.

When he took over the case from another judge 14 months ago, Williams told the attorneys in the case, “All that is necessary for a case to take forever is for a judge to be willing to let it take forever and that plainly is not my intent.”

Apologized for Delay

But Wednesday, he apologized for the nine months it took just to deal with police searches in the case. “Because both the searches . . . and warrants were overly broad, we ended up (going) over thousands of documents, including (school) report cards,” he said.

He also pointed out that he had to retrace the work done by the previous judge, who was disqualified by the prosecutor after months of reading transcripts and legal documents. That prosecutor then, himself, stepped aside, precipitating the appointment of another deputy district attorney and triggering yet another delay.