Rite for Dead Son, Trial Date Coincide : Murder Prosecution to Begin on Day of Parents’ 5th Memorial

Gary and Collene Campbell of San Juan Capistrano will drive their motorboat through choppy waters two miles beyond Catalina Island on Friday morning, just as they do every year on April 17, and toss out homegrown roses in memory of their son, Scott.

On the same day, Donald P. DiMascio, 36, of El Monte, is scheduled to go on trial for murder in Scott Campbell’s death.

As Dimascio’s trial unfolds, an Orange County Superior Court jury can expect to hear a chilling tale of high-stakes drug dealing and betrayal. It will not be the first time the story has been heard in court. Scott Campbell’s longtime friend, Lawrence R. Cowell, 38, was convicted of murder in the same case and has been sent to prison.

It was on April 17, 1982, that 27-year-old Scott Campbell was strangled in an airplane, somewhere between Orange County and Catalina. His body was dropped from an airplane at 2,000 feet on the other side of the island, according to evidence at Cowell’s trial, and was never found.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas M. Goethals vowed to the Campbells a few months ago that he would try to see to it that the DiMascio trial started before the fifth anniversary of their son’s death. Now, defense lawyers are hoping for an appellate court stay that could delay it another six months.

Judge’s Removal Sought

DiMascio’s attorneys want the trial judge, Superior Court Judge Donald M. McCartin, removed from the case. McCartin presided at Cowell’s non-jury trial in January, 1986, and found him guilty of first-degree murder.

“We’ve been in and out of courtrooms so many times it’s hard to keep track of how many judges have been on this case,” Collene Campbell said last week. She counted them one day, and the total was 12--until last Friday, when presiding Superior Court Judge Harmon G. Scoville, who granted the defense a one-week delay to file its appeal, became No. 13.

In one judge’s courtroom, prosecutors argued against a motion by DiMascio’s attorneys for a delay. That judge suggested that there already had been so many delays that one more would not matter.

“I wanted to jump up and tell him what difference it made,” Collene Campbell said.

For Gary and Collene Campbell, as well as their other child, Shelly, the delays have been torturous.

After five years, both of the parents still break down when they talk about the ordeal of coming to court. They have not missed a single court hearing date since Cowell and DiMascio were arrested in March, 1983.

“It’s painful, but we made a pact with each other that we would be here,” Gary Campbell said. “For our son, for ourselves and to let the system know that the victims’ families do care.”

The Campbells are more than just court observers with a vested interest. Without the Campbells, law enforcement officials acknowledge, there wouldn’t be any trial.

The Campbells knew on April 17, 1982, that their son, who had his own computer company, was on his way to Fargo, N.D., on business.

When he didn’t return after a week, the Campbells called several police agencies but got no help. So Gary Campbell began searching airports until he spotted his son’s car at Fullerton Municipal Airport. There, he was surprised to see that Larry Cowell, whose parents were close friends of Gary and Collene Campbell, had leased a private plane at the airfield the morning their son disappeared.

According to court testimony, Gary Campbell then questioned Cowell, who denied seeing Scott Campbell the morning of his death. But the victim’s father later learned that Cowell had lied about where he had flown that day.

That was enough to convince Anaheim Police Detective Larry Flynn that the Campbells might have been right to worry. Flynn became involved because Scott Campbell had been living in Anaheim before he disappeared.

Flynn gives the Campbells all the credit for getting an investigation started. But it was Flynn who hatched the idea that led to Cowell and DiMascio’s arrest nearly a year later.

It turned out that Scott Campbell had not been going to North Dakota on computer business. According to court records, he had made arrangements to sell a pound of cocaine to someone. Unknown to Campbell, the customer was an informant for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Gregory Fox.

Flynn persuaded Fox to come to California and talk to Cowell, who thought Fox was with the Mafia, according to Cowell’s attorneys.

During that conversation, Fox was wired with a microphone, and Flynn was taping it all. Fox told Cowell he didn’t care what had happened to Scott Campbell, but needed to know because Campbell had a phone number that could cause trouble for Fox’s bosses.

Cowell told Fox that he and DiMascio had killed Campbell and that “we dumped his body in the ocean.” Fox then met with DiMascio, who made some brutally frank confessions of his own.

DiMascio, whose attorneys say he was convinced that Fox and another man with him were tied to the East Coast Mafia, said he killed Campbell because Cowell promised him $5,000. He said he didn’t collect from Cowell, but made about $8,000 selling his half of a package of cocaine, which they had taken from Campbell.

DiMascio told them he used half of the money to have “my Cadillac completely recherried.”

Fox and the man with him asked DiMascio if he would kill again. DiMascio told them he had killed someone while in prison on a robbery conviction and that he would kill again “if it’s worth my while. Yeah, I’ll go shoot the mother--it don’t bother me a bit.”

Robert P. App, one of DiMascio’s attorneys, claims that DiMascio made up the whole murder scenario to protect Cowell. DiMascio, App contends, thought Cowell would be killed if he couldn’t explain why Campbell didn’t show up in North Dakota.

App says DiMascio contends he was not even in the plane that day.

“If you set aside his so-called confession, there simply is no case against him,” App said.

But for Gary and Collene Campbell, DiMascio’s long taped statement to the undercover informants is a cruel chronicle of their son’s death.

DiMascio said he broke Campbell’s nose, then his neck, stripped him of his clothes and possessions, including a wallet containing $1,700, and then tossed the body from the plane. DiMascio said he later burned all of Campbell’s possessions in his own back yard.

From the Campbells’ viewpoint, the long wait for DiMascio’s trial is just an added cruelty.

DiMascio, who is free on $250,000 bail, was scheduled to go to trial immediately after Cowell’s conviction. But his attorneys at the time, who were with the public defender’s office, declared a conflict of interest. The case was turned over to private attorneys App and Clarence E. Haynes.

They immediately filed a motion to have the case dismissed because the killing took place outside Orange County’s jurisdiction. They lost in Superior Court, and the 4th District Court of Appeal refused to hear an appeal. But the dispute took months of paper work by both sides.

App and Haynes did win with one of their motions. The courts found that blood on a curtain inside the rented airplane could not be introduced as evidence.

The most serious issue will come once the trial begins. The defense wants the judge to rule that DiMascio’s statements to the undercover informants are inadmissible as evidence. Cowell’s attorneys sought the same thing and lost.

The defense also will try to get an allegation that the killing was a murder-for-hire thrown out. That allegation means a possible death sentence for DiMascio if he is convicted.

The current dispute, over who the trial judge will be, will arise again Friday if the Court of Appeal doesn’t intervene.

The Campbells say they will be there Friday. But they will also fit in their trip to the waters off Catalina.

“We don’t have a grave to visit,” Gary Campbell said. “It’s mainly a quiet time, just to let our boy know we care.”

The Campbells have become painfully aware their son was involved in the drug culture, though they insist defense attorneys have exaggerated how serious that involvement was.

Scott Campbell had been convicted of manslaughter in the death of someone he had been associated with, though he ended up serving no more than a few months of jail time on work furlough. The Campbells believe it was a case of self-defense.

To the Campbells, Scott was “a wonderful son.” He and his parents talked by phone almost every day. The Campbells say they were extremely close.

“Scotty was naive about people, too trusting,” Gary Campbell said. “But he was a very caring person. Our pain at losing him is just about more than we can bear.”

In recent years, the Campbells have become active in a crime victims’ group, and campaigned against former Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird in her unsuccessful bid for confirmation last November.

“We were at a meeting of nine people the other night, and it was astonishing--for all nine, their loved one was killed by someone who had killed before,” Gary Campbell said. Cowell had an earlier vehicular manslaughter conviction.

“So many of these victims want to come to court, but they just can’t muster up the courage. We hope our being here might help some of them.”