3 Charged With Killing in Plot to Aid Prisoner

Three men were charged Wednesday with murdering a Hollywood man after allegedly picking him as a random victim in a plot to help a Riverside County prisoner negotiate his way out of jail, authorities said.

The prisoner, Michael Birman, 30, allegedly had his stepson and two friends kill the man, who was found shot earlier this month in Topanga Canyon, so he could bargain for lenient treatment from authorities in exchange for information about the killing, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy George Smith said.

The victim, Catarino Reyes, 43, was abducted from a street in Hollywood and fatally shot the night of April 18 by Robert Meyers, 31, Lawrence Hawkins, 30, and Andrew Fox, 25, all of Riverside, Sheriff’s Lt. Donn Brooks alleged.

The three men were charged with murder, robbery and kidnaping and ordered to appear in Los Angeles Municipal Court for arraignment May 1. They are being held without bail in County Jail.

Charges were not filed Wednesday against Birman, but he remains under investigation, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert F. Kuhnert said.

‘Mind-Boggling Mystery’

“This case has been a mind-boggling mystery that we’re just now trying to tie together,” Brooks said.

The body of Reyes, a baker, was found in a remote area off Summit to Summit Motorway, a hilltop road overlooking the San Fernando Valley, Brooks said.

Investigators initially could not identify Reyes’ body, but about two hours after they left the crime scene, Birman called the Malibu sheriff’s station from jail with information about the slaying, Brooks said.

When deputies interviewed him at the jail the next day, he again told them details of the crime, such as the location and the fact that Reyes had been shot once with a .38-caliber pistol, Brooks said.

Birman also told them that he knew who had committed the crime, Smith said.

He told them enough so that “the officers knew that he knew precisely what happened,” Brooks said.

“They were very, very concerned as to how somebody in Riverside County Jail would know so many critical factors regarding a murder that had occurred up in L.A. County just a few hours before,” Brooks said.

“Birman wanted to wheel and deal” and obtain his release, Brooks said.

Kuhnert said that Birman, whose last known address was in Riverside, may only have wished to avoid jail time for his conviction in two residential robberies in the San Fernando Valley.

Birman pleaded guilty in Van Nuys Superior Court in 1985 to two counts of robbery, court records indicate. But he failed to appear for sentencing and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Heroin Possession

He was arrested April 15, 1986, in Riverside County on a heroin possession charge and has been held there since.

In 1982, Birman was sentenced in Los Angeles County to three years in prison for soliciting a person to commit a crime, according to the state Department of Corrections. But authorities Wednesday did not know details of that crime.

He was released in 1983, several months before the Valley robberies.

Meyers, Hawkins and Fox became involved in the investigation April 21 after they were arrested on charges of leaving a Marina del Rey restaurant without paying the check, Smith said. Sheriff’s investigators discovered that one of the men was Birman’s stepson, and further investigation led them to search the home of Birman’s wife in the Northern California city of Woodland, Brooks said. There they found a .38-caliber pistol believed to have been used to shoot Reyes, he said.

The wife, Charis Birman, also is under investigation, Kuhnert said.

The charges do not say whether the men allegedly killed Reyes for money or simply out of allegiance to Birman.

“We don’t know what the arrangements were,” Brooks said.