Suit Against 3 Deputies Raises Questions in Slaying

More than three months after Catherine Michelle Braley’s body was found in a Van Nuys parking lot, the slaying remains a mystery cloaked in allegations that law enforcement officers are responsible for her death.

Braley, a 26-year-old department store cashier, walked out of a bar called The Hunter the night of Jan. 14. The next morning, her body was found in a parking lot three blocks away.

Her death received little public notice until this month when Braley’s mother, Mary Postma, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against three Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. The suit seeks $10 million and alleges the deputies, Robert Waters, Robert Mallon and a third man, known only as Mike, left the bar with Braley and killed her when she refused to have sex with them.

The lawsuit has put the Los Angeles Police Department’s investigation of the killing under scrutiny and has drawn attorneys for the deputies and Postma into a legal fray. It also has raised unanswered questions about the case.

Authorities Won’t Talk

Other than to deny that the three deputies were involved in the killing, police and the deputies have declined to comment. What is left is a case in which criminal accusations made in civil court have not arisen, and--by all police accounts--will not arise in a criminal court.

At the center of the dispute is Postma’s attorney, Stephen Yagman, who acknowledges that the allegations in the lawsuit are based on circumstantial evidence and speculation.

Yagman described himself as a civil rights lawyer who specializes in police brutality cases. He said he has filed hundreds of lawsuits against police agencies and, along the way, has encountered as much criticism from the legal community as praise.

Police and attorneys for the deputies said Yagman filed the most recent suit as much to publicize himself as to draw attention to the killing.

“It is a spurious lawsuit,” said Cmdr. William Booth, chief spokesman for the Police Department. “It is a bizarre, attention-getting thing.”

‘Lies,’ Deputies’ Attorney Says

Carol Ann Hummer, an attorney for the deputies, filed a motion last week calling accusations in the suit “blatant lies . . . unnecessarily incorporated in order to gain notoriety.”

Yagman denied he is seeking publicity. He called the investigation into Braley’s death “utterly inept” and said the suit may be the only means of bringing Braley’s killers to justice.

“I’m convinced that Braley and some deputies left that bar together,” he said. “Beyond that, I’m not sure. I think it is more probable than not they killed her.

“If these guys didn’t do it, then the LAPD could be blowing me out of the water,” he added. “But they don’t say a thing.”

But police said responding in detail to the lawsuit could compromise the investigation into who really killed Braley. “Our primary consideration here is to solve the homicide,” Booth said. “To discuss any kind of evidence could be harmful.”

Meanwhile, it remains a mystery what happened to Catherine Braley on Jan. 14.

Car Broken

On that night, Braley was without transportation. Her car was broken down and parked at the Van Nuys trailer park where she lived. Braley’s mother drove her to work at the nearby FEDCO department store on Raymer Street. At the end of her shift, she telephoned a friend and asked for a ride home.

Her friend, Billie, who asked that her full name not be used, agreed to meet Braley at 8 p.m. at The Hunter, a bar on Raymer, about a block off Sepulveda Boulevard and about a block from the FEDCO store.

Braley regularly patronized The Hunter, a small establishment in a business and industrial area along the Southern Pacific railroad. The bar’s patrons are blue- and white-collar, and most are regulars.

The Hunter was crowded on the evening of Jan. 14, with as many as 30 customers. Five people who were there that night, including a bartender, said in interviews that from six to 10 of the patrons were sheriff’s deputies, though none was in uniform. They said word spread in the bar that the men had come from the funeral of a deputy killed in the line of duty. They said Braley sat at the bar and began drinking and talking with some of the deputies and with other friends.

“It was a friendly drinking crowd,” said Kelly Hudson, a friend of Braley. He sat several stools away from her at the bar that night.

Billie, Braley’s friend, said she was introduced to two men, “Bob and Mike,” shortly after she arrived. The men said they were deputies and were talking with Braley, Billie said. Billie said she decided to leave because the bar was too crowded and the deputies were being “vulgar . . . but in a nice way.” She said she asked Braley if she wanted a ride home, but Braley declined.

“I told Cathy to call me if she needed a ride,” she said.

Noel Warnick, another of Braley’s friends, said he was sitting near Braley when he overheard one of the deputies ask her to have sex with him. Warnick said he asked the man to “take that talk outside,” and the two men exchanged words before Warnick decided to leave the bar.

“They were deputies, . . .” Warnick said. “I left the bar.”

Lewdness Charged

Bonnie Harnden, also a friend of Braley, said in a sworn deposition taken as a result of the suit against the deputies that she had danced with a deputy. She said the man exposed himself to her during the dancing. No one else interviewed by The Times reported seeing the incident.

Harnden said she left the bar about 11 p.m. A short while later, according to Kelly Hudson and the bartender, Braley left at the same time as three of the deputies.

Both Hudson and the bartender knew one of the deputies, Robert Waters, who they said was a regular at The Hunter and a friend of Braley. The bartender said the other two deputies had been introduced as Bob Mallon and his partner, Mike.

Hudson and the bartender said they heard Braley laugh shortly after she went out the bar’s open door. They pushed back a shade in front of a window and saw Braley sitting in a street puddle, apparently having slipped as she stepped off a curb. They said they also could see that Waters had left the others and crossed the street toward his car. The other two deputies were standing near Braley and one was trying to help her up, the onlookers said. Hudson and the bartender said they let the shade drop over the window and never saw Braley again.

Body Partially Clothed

About eight hours later, Braley’s partially clothed body was discovered in the corner of a parking lot at the county Crisis Management Center at 8101 Sepulveda Blvd. She had been strangled, her body mutilated and her head crushed with a piece of concrete. Police refused to say whether she had been sexually assaulted. The body was next to a fence that runs between the crisis center and the Eden Roc apartment complex next door. Wrapped around the upper torso was a yellow FEDCO cashier’s smock. On the store identification tag clipped to it was the name Cathy Braley.

A few weeks after the killing, detectives insisted that no deputies were suspects. Detectives said that a man initially listed as a possible suspect in the killing had been cleared of involvement. Police said he was not a law officer.

Detective Pat Anguiano said shortly after the killing that investigators theorized that Braley had gone drunkenly to Sepulveda Boulevard after leaving The Hunter to ask a friend who lived nearby for a ride home or for a place to stay.

Known as Bad Area

The area of Sepulveda Boulevard where Braley’s body was found is known for street drug sales and prostitution, police said. Anguiano said Braley may have met her killer somewhere on the street.

Braley’s friend Warnick lives in an apartment at the Eden Roc. He said Braley once spent the night at his apartment after an evening of drinking. He said it was possible she was trying to get there on the night she was killed.

One possible clue to what might have happened is contained in an investigator’s report filed with autopsy findings. The report states that a resident who lives near where the body was found reported hearing a woman scream shortly after 11 p.m. on Jan. 14. According to the report, the woman repeatedly shouted a man’s first name and “Stop! You are hurting me.” The name that was shouted was not one of the deputies’ names, but police asked that it not be published.

After three months, two detectives still are working full time on the case, and police are optimistic that it will be solved.

But those who knew Braley are still troubled by the slaying.

Said Braley’s friend Billie: “I check myself every day and think: Why didn’t she come with me or why didn’t I stay?”