$62-Million Suit Filed in False 4-Year Jailing

A man who spent more than four years in prison for a murder in which a veteran Los Angeles police officer was later implicated filed a $62-million suit Thursday against local authorities and others who he said failed to investigate the evidence that would have exonerated him.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, Charles F. Persico, 44, claimed law enforcement officials in Los Angeles and Glendale ignored evidence that former LAPD officer William E. Leasure had arranged the May, 1980, shooting of Highland Park beauty shop proprietor Ann Smith and at least one other contract killing.

Leasure, 40, a former 16-year veteran of the department, is awaiting trial on murder charges filed nearly 19 months after Persico was released from prison.

Persico, facing the possibility of a life sentence, had pleaded guilty to a lesser offense of manslaughter, although his attorney, Mike Mitchell, said he had passed a polygraph test demonstrating his innocence.

According to the lawsuit, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office presented sealed evidence to Superior Court Judge Betty Jo Sheldon in December last year exonerating Persico, and the judge set aside his conviction and ordered him released from parole.

Learned of Cover-Up

But Persico, a former motel manager in La Crescenta, claims it wasn’t until he saw news accounts of the murder charges filed against Leasure in May that he learned of the cover-up he alleges in his suit.

The suit seeks $50 million in general damages and $12 million in punitive damages from the cities of Los Angeles and Glendale, Los Angeles County and a number of police officials and investigators for deprivation of Persico’s civil rights.

Among the defendants in the lawsuit is Leasure’s wife, Betsy Mogul, an assistant Los Angeles city attorney, and Kay Kuns, an associate of Mogul and sister of a man with whom Leasure allegedly became involved in a multimillion-dollar yacht theft fraud ring.

Both women should have known about Leasure’s purportedly illegal activities and had a duty as public prosecutors to investigate them, the lawsuit asserts.

The lawsuit also alleges that Dennis France, identified as the triggerman hired by Leasure to kill Smith, told Glendale Police Officer Mike Post about a March, 1977, contract killing. Leasure is a suspect but has not been charged in the slaying of Gilbert Cervantes, 76.

Post should have investigated the complaint or told Los Angeles authorities about it, but he failed to do so, or if he did, Los Angeles officials failed to follow up on it, the lawsuit contends.