Woman Contends They Killed Daughter : 2 Deputies Served Copies of Slaying Suit

Two undercover Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, complying with a federal court order, met Friday with an attorney and were served with a lawsuit accusing them of killing a Van Nuys woman.

Attorney Stephen Yagman, representing the dead woman’s mother, handed copies of the lawsuit to Deputies Robert Waters and Robert Mallen in the brief meeting in the narcotics bureau of a Sheriff’s Department training facility in Whittier.

The suit asks for $10 million in damages from the men and a third unnamed deputy.

U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer on Thursday ordered the men to meet Yagman after he argued that sheriff’s officials would not identify them as deputies or help him locate them.

Sheriff’s officials have said it is not department policy to name undercover officers or give out information about them.

Los Angeles police detectives repeatedly have said no deputies are suspects in the killing of Catherine M. Braley, whose bludgeoned body was discovered Jan. 15 near some bushes by a parking lot at a county crisis center on Sepulveda Boulevard.

After he met with the two men Friday, Yagman said a sheriff’s deputy called him with information that could lead to the identity of the third deputy.

The suit alleges that the officers strangled and disfigured Braley, 26, after she refused to have sex with them.

The suit says Braley, a checker at Fedco, was last seen alive the night of Jan. 14 as she and three deputies left a Van Nuys bar called The Hunter.

The suit, filed under the federal Civil Rights Act, alleges that Braley’s constitutional rights were violated by excessive police violence. The suit was filed on behalf of her mother, Mary Potsma.