Court Hears Murder Solicitation on Tape

A woman tearfully admitted to a Los Angeles police officer that she hired another officer, William E. Leasure, to arrange the killing of her former husband, according to a tape played in court Thursday.

“I asked Leasure to kill him (her former husband),” Paulette de los Reyes, 44, told Officer David Scroggins last year. “I never gave him (Leasure) any money. . . . He said, ‘Paulette, I may need a favor from you someday.’ ”

Antonio de los Reyes, 63, was shot once in the head in September, 1981, in the parking lot of a lounge in Sherman Oaks, where he had been performing as a bass player.

About seven hours of tape, much of it garbled, was played during a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court to determine if Paulette de los Reyes; Leasure, 40, and Arthur Gayle Smith, 55, should stand trial in Superior Court.

Smith, who owned an insurance business in Highland Park, and Leasure are also accused in a separate case of arranging the May, 1980, murder of Smith’s wife, Ann. She was gunned down in the beauty salon where she worked.

Yacht Theft Alleged

In a third case, Leasure, Smith and Robert D. Kuns of Newport Beach have also been charged with participating in a $1.5-million yacht theft and insurance fraud ring.

On the tape, Paulette de los Reyes speculated to Scroggins that Leasure may have killed her former husband out of love for her and because he knew she expected to gain $2 million from her husband’s will.

She and Scroggins had become friends before the murder investigation began, testimony showed.

The admissions were made after Scroggins, spewing profanities, offered to kill Leasure for her, pounded his fists on the dashboard and screamed that she would die in the gas chamber if she did not tell him the truth, according to the tape.