INS to Deport Suspect in ’82 Disappearance of 2 Families

An Englishman once held in connection with the 1982 killings of two immigrant San Fernando Valley families was arrested Monday by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and is scheduled for immediate deportation, INS officials said.

Authorities took the man, Harvey Rader of Granada Hills, into custody at 11:45 a.m. for failing to inform the agency of a 1977 robbery conviction in Maidenstone, England. Hours later, after a hearing, the immigration court in Los Angeles ruled he must leave the country. Rader emigrated to the United States in the late 1970s.

“He never told us about the incident, and that makes him excludable because of moral turpitude,” INS spokesman Joe Flanders said. He said flight arrangements were being made to “get him out of the country as soon as possible.”

Conviction Discovered

The 1977 conviction came to light in an exchange of information between the INS, Los Angeles police and English law enforcement, Flanders said.

Flanders said there was no connection between the deportation and the arrest of Rader, a mechanic, in the murder case. That case is still officially under investigation.

“We’re still looking into it, and we still consider Rader to be a suspect in the murders of the six people,” said Cmdr. William Booth, a spokesman for the Los Angeles police.

“We don’t mind his going to England at all,” Booth said. “Frankly, we have some hope that his deportation will influence some people who may have knowledge” about the murders. “There could be persons who haven’t come forward because of fear or intimidation.”

In 1983 Rader was arrested with a boyhood friend, London cab driver Ashley Paulle, 44, on suspicion of killing Peter and Joan Davis of Granada Hills, and four members of the Salomon family of Northridge. The victims’ bodies have never been found.

Case Called Weak

Charges against Paulle were dismissed by a Los Angeles municipal judge. Authorities said the case against him was weak and that incriminating statements he made were not admissible as evidence. Rader was freed after the district attorney’s office concluded it did not have enough admissible evidence to charge him with murder. Rader was apparently arrested largely on the basis of Paulle’s inadmissible statements to authorities.

The police said the theft of artwork appeared to be the motive for the killings of the Davises, Paulle’s next-door neighbors. They have not speculated publicly on the motive for the murders of the Salomons.

In a civil case in August, a federal court ordered Rader to pay $25,000 in punitive damages after a jury found he and a physician, Dr. Kurt J. Wagner, conspired to stage the theft of lithographs and Oriental artwork.

In an attempt to discredit Rader’s testimony in that case, an attorney for the plaintiffs told the jury that Rader had been convicted of felonies 17 times in England.