Body Found in Backyard After Woman’s Suicide : Years of Stormy Relationship Have Grisly End

Joseph (Otto) Baan and Olivia Bolanos each came halfway around the world more than 20 years ago and somehow found one another at a used-car lot in downtown Los Angeles.

She was a dentist from Costa Rica and he was a car salesman from Hungary. Baan sold Bolanos a Volkswagen and, not long afterward, the two were married. The immigrant couple settled in Torrance in the late 1960s with their baby girl, Gizella, and Bolanos’ son by a previous marriage.

It seemed a happy match for a short time, neighbors said, before the couple separated in 1969 and Bolanos, who resumed her maiden name, returned with the children to Costa Rica. But Baan and Bolanos would be drawn together again 15 years later in what police now say was a second, and fatal, union.

Bolanos was found dead eight days ago at the home the divorced couple shared on Newton Street, in the affluent south end of Torrance. The 52-year-old woman cut her own throat and arms and set the house afire before settling into a running bathtub to die, police said.

Just five days before her suicide, Torrance police detectives had questioned Bolanos about the disappearance of Baan nearly a year earlier.

Further suspicion was cast on Bolanos when a relative reported to police that she had been unusually interested in her garden and an apricot tree that Bolanos said benefited from “rich underground nutrients.”

Police and coroner’s investigators followed those clues Tuesday to the garden, where they unearthed what they believe is Baan’s decomposed body. An autopsy revealed Wednesday that the man in the grave died of “head trauma and strangulation,” according to Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher. It may take until next week to determine whether the body is Baan’s.

Police said they believe that the diminutive Bolanos killed her former husband and buried him 18 inches beneath her garden.

The ghastly discoveries have left friends and relatives to ponder a relationship that many considered unusual but none saw as violent.

Baan, 62, became a naturalized citizen in the fall of 1956, at about the same time that Soviet tanks were crushing an uprising in his native Hungary. He had been a butcher in his homeland, but he turned to car sales when he arrived in Los Angeles in about 1960, according to a fellow salesman.

Often Shifted Jobs

Baan worked for half a dozen dealerships over the next 25 years, according to one employer, shifting jobs in an attempt to keep up with the latest sales trends. One of his co-workers remembered him as a deft salesman who was well-liked by customers for his accent and the catchy name that sounded just like the German autobahn.

His financial manager said that Baan was thrifty and managed to buy properties in Oxnard and Big Bear, in addition to his home in Torrance.

He was popular along Newton Street, where neighbors would frequently borrow his pickup truck and tools for work around their homes. Baan liked to bring everyone on the block catches from his numerous fishing trips and meats that he smoked at home.

He dressed fastidiously and seldom dropped his gregarious manner, acquaintances said. “He was definitely a salesman,” said one neighbor. “Everything he said, he was selling something.”

Bolanos was a more mysterious figure to neighbors. Born in San Jose, Costa Rica, she was proud of her training and work as a dentist.

Her daughter Gizella, now 20, said Bolanos was frustrated that American officials wanted her to undergo more training before she would be allowed to practice in the United States. Her mother worked for a short time as a dental hygienist but was frustrated and quit, Gizella said this week.

Tensions also arose inside the Baan home, the daughter said, because Bolanos’ mother, who lived with the couple for a time, frequently criticized Baan. The young woman recalled that her father was prone to fits of anger but would usually apologize after the outbursts.

Escape Crumbling Marriage

The year after they settled in Torrance, Gizella said, Bolanos decided to escape her deteriorating marriage and return to her career in Costa Rica. She took her son and daughter with her when she returned home in 1969. At some point afterward, the couple was divorced.

Gizella returned to the United States in 1982 to live with her father, while her mother moved in with her sister in a Seattle suburb. Bolanos was a manic-depressive who three times made unsuccessful attempts at suicide, her daughter said. In 1983, she survived an overdose of pills that put her in a coma for a week and last July she again had pills pumped from her stomach after another suicide attempt.

With a third failed marriage behind him in 1984, Baan invited Bolanos back to the home in Torrance that they had bought more than 15 years before, family members said. But he made sure that her rights would be strictly limited.

Neighbors said Baan had been infuriated when his third wife sought a property settlement in the divorce. So he had Bolanos sign an agreement that she was returning to his home only as a housekeeper. “He didn’t want anyone to think they were being reunited as husband and wife,” said John C. Moore, Gizella Baan’s lawyer. “He went to some lengths to distance himself from this woman maritally.”

Paid $50 a Month

Moore also described a letter stipulating that Bolanos was to have no interest in Baan’s home or property. Baan paid Bolanos $50 a month for housework and the two slept in separate bedrooms, according to Gizella, who moved out of the house in July.

Neighbors reported that their Costa Rican neighbor was pleasant but reserved. For weeks at a time she would not be seen outside the home. Bolanos called these her periods of “crisis,” Gizella recalled.

Gizella said she was living in Portland, Ore., last fall when she called home to see how her parents were doing. Her mother said she was fine but that Baan had left to take a job as a chef on a cruise ship.

Gizella thought that was strange, but theorized that her father might have become fed up with his life in Torrance after three failed marriages. “I thought maybe he was just sick and tired of all this, with his third divorce and everything,” the daughter said.

Bolanos told her daughter that Baan had called from Germany and announced plans to marry a woman he met there.

Letter From Son

Bolanos even showed her daughter a letter in which her son, stationed with the Army near Frankfurt, wrote that he had dined with Baan and his future wife. The letter mollified Gizella for a time.

But the young woman said she still had nagging doubts after visiting the house: Why would her meticulous father leave on an extended trip without taking his wallet, passport and most of his clothes?

Her suspicions came to a head in late September, when the company that had managed her father’s finances no longer had enough cash to pay his bills. The firm ran out of money to make payments on the Torrance home and on the properties in Big Bear and Oxnard, Gizella said.

No Record of German Visit

She went to the Torrance police last month and told them she was worried about her father. She said he would not let his properties slip into foreclosure.

Bolanos became agitated and angry after being questioned by Torrance police Nov. 6, her daughter reported. She said that Gizella was accusing her of murder, even though the police had not made any allegations.

But the disturbed woman took her own life before police could ask any more questions. In the last week, detectives learned that immigration agents have no record of Baan leaving the country and that German officials have no record of Baan’s presence there.

The only other evidence that Baan might be abroad was discounted after the suicide. Detectives in Torrance said they contacted Bolanos’ son--Joseph Bonilla, 25--and he acknowledged that he had not seen Baan in Germany. Bonilla told police that the letter saying he had seen Baan had been written at his mother’s request.

Bolanos reportedly told her son that she needed the letter to “get Gizella off my back,” because her daughter was asking too many questions about her father. Police said they believe Bonilla wrote the letter as a favor to his mother. He is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

Gizella seemed calm Tuesday morning as she stood in front of the home where police prepared to dig for her father’s body.

“This house was bought many, many years ago,” she said, “and I lived here when I was a baby.”

Wednesday evening, her mother’s body was scheduled for a flight to Costa Rica, where she will be buried. A second body lay in the Los Angeles County morgue.

“It’s a strange story,” Gizella said.