Disappearance Case Figure Gets Prison for Passport Fraud

A car dealer who said he is being persecuted because authorities wrongly suspect him in the disappearance and presumed murders of two San Fernando Valley families was sentenced to two years and nine months in federal prison Monday for filing an application for a U.S. passport in a false name.

Harvey Rader, a 45-year-old Englishman, said his attempt to get a passport under an assumed name was a response to Los Angeles police who are “maliciously persecuting me” because they suspect him in the presumed 1982 killings of Sol and Elaine Salomon of Northridge; their two children, Mitchell, 9, and Michelle, 14, and Peter and Joan Davis of Granada Hills.

Police have said that Rader, a business associate of the two missing men, is their prime suspect in the mass disappearance case.

Rader until recently lived in Granada Hills and operated a luxury automobile leasing and repair business in Reseda.

He was arrested in 1983 in connection with the disappearances but not charged.

In asking U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler to put him on probation for the passport offense, Rader said, “I wish to state categorically that I am innocent” of wrongdoing in the disappearances.

He pleaded guilty, however, to the charge that he pretended to be Andrew Duncan Masterson of Kansas City when he applied for a passport last March.

Criminal Record

Rader had been deported in December, 1986, for failing to disclose an extensive criminal record in England when he applied to become a permanent resident of this country in 1980. Rader had been convicted 13 times for crimes of theft or violence.

In February, 1987, after two months in England, he reentered this country illegally, court documents disclosed. Then he applied for the passport under a false name.

“The government wanted to deport me because officers of the Los Angeles Police Department suspected (me) of being involved in murders, and even though I was never charged with any crime, they took it upon themselves to have me removed from the United States,” he said in a declaration.

Rader was arrested in December by an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent assigned to a Justice Department organized-crime strike force in Los Angeles. INS files indicate that federal agents were aware that “Rader is a suspect in the killing of six people.”

When he reentered the country illegally, he paid $1,500 for a driver’s license and other identification in Masterson’s name that would help him get a passport, his lawyer said Rader told a probation officer.

Rader told the judge that he had returned because his wife phoned him in England and told him that she was in dire straits financially and that their son had pneumonia.

Financial Problems

“Like any other man, I was shattered when my wife telephoned me in London and told me of financial problems and the sickness of my then 4-year-old son,” Rader said.

Stotler said she was puzzled, however, why Rader, who apparently made no attempt to hide his return to Los Angeles, sought a passport in a new name.

“I cannot figure out why the defendant would do this,” she said.

Rader said it was because he wanted to be able to visit his aging mother in England and return to this country hassle-free.