Marine’s Wife Called Police Before Her Death

A day before her charred and bludgeoned body was found strapped into a car that had plunged into a mountain canyon, a Marine’s wife summoned police to her apartment to complain that her husband had physically abused her, according to police records.

Police and coroner’s reports reviewed by The Times in advance of a military court proceeding scheduled to resume Tuesday at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station also indicate that 23-year-old Melinda Thomas was pregnant when she died.

Her body was found last Dec. 10 in a car that had gone off the Ortega Highway just inside Riverside County.

In the early morning of Dec. 9, records show, Tustin police officers were called to a military housing complex to investigate Melinda Thomas’ complaint that she had been struck in the face and choked by her husband, Marine Sgt. Joseph L. Thomas.

Twenty-seven hours later, Melinda Thomas was found dead in the wreckage near Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.

Although her death was first ruled a suicide, prosecutors now allege that her killer or killers--trying to make the death appear a suicide--strapped the body into her 1987 Suzuki Samurai, which was doused with gasoline, set afire and pushed into a ravine 60 feet below the Ortega Highway.

Her husband, a 28-year-old who is stationed at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, was arrested April 5 and charged by the military with the murder.

Thomas faces a preliminary hearing Tuesday at El Toro to determine if authorities have enough evidence to prosecute him on the charge of premeditated murder.

The hearing, known as an Article 32 proceeding, began May 17 but was delayed to allow Thomas’ civilian attorney time to prepare his defense. Military authorities are conducting the prosecution because the woman’s death allegedly occurred in Marine housing.

Thomas’ lawyer, Edward W. Hall of Santa Ana, acknowledges that Melinda may have been murdered. But, he says, the Marines have the wrong man.

Tustin Police reports indicate that officers were summoned to the Thomas apartment on the base at 12:49 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 9. Military police wanted assistance in quelling a marital dispute and called for Tustin police, as is often done when one of the parties is a civilian.

When the Tustin officers arrived, Melinda Thomas told them that her husband had struck her twice in the face and choked her because she had yelled at him. She said her husband had been out drinking and returned home late that night.

But Joseph Thomas told officers that his wife had attacked him and that he pushed her in self-defense.

According to the police report, Melinda Thomas had “redness” on her face and neck, but no visible marks were seen on Joseph Thomas. Melinda Thomas told police she did not want her husband prosecuted, so no charges were filed.

Officers said that after things “calmed down,” Thomas left the apartment, while his wife stayed there.

Attorney Hall said Thomas left the apartment that morning to stay with one of his superiors--a noncommissioned officer. He was allowed to return to the apartment later that same day to get ready for work, Hall said.

The following morning, however, officials were back at the apartment.

This time it was an Orange County coroner’s deputy. Acting at the request of Riverside County officials, the deputy went to the Thomas apartment to inform any survivors that at about 4:30 that morning, Melinda Thomas had been found dead in a burning vehicle off the Ortega Highway.

The deputy was met by Joseph Thomas and during their conversation was told about an unsigned note.

“Dear Joe,” it said. “I know why you hate me. What’s to love? . . . I don’t keep house and I don’t give you what you need all the time. I just don’t know why you got to continue hurting me. I told you I was going to change, but you not coming home proves to me that you just don’t care anymore. I sat here all day long on the brink of a nervous breakdown. So I think I am going to my moms and get things straightened out. You care more about your friends than you do me. So I’m going to my moms so I can have a stress free pregnancy. Your causing me stress and I know its affecting my baby.”

Riverside coroner’s investigators say the note, indicating that Melinda Thomas was despondent over her marriage, helped them make their initial determination that she had committed suicide.

On April 13, however, after military officials announced they were going to charge Thomas with murder, the Riverside County coroner’s office changed its cause of death to homicide.

The coroner’s autopsy showed that Melinda Thomas was four months’ pregnant at the time of her death and had traces of cocaine in her blood. The blood also contained carbon monoxide, but only at levels that would be consistent with the smoking of cigarettes. This finding later led coroner’s investigators to conclude that she was dead when her car caught fire.

“It was felt by this investigator even with injuries to render the subject unconscious as the vehicle tumbled down the mountainside, she would have inhaled enough hot gasses to show a higher concentration of carbon monoxide in her system,” a newly filed coroner’s report says.

According to a report written on May 25 by Mickey Worthington of the Riverside coroner’s office, the change in cause of death came after Special Agent Jose S. Ambriz of the Naval Investigative Service told civilian officials that he had information that showed that Melinda Thomas had been beaten with an unknown object by her husband at their apartment.

Then, the coroner’s report said, Thomas and a friend put the body in the trunk of a rental car and drove out the Ortega Highway to a pullout area along the road about a half mile east of the Orange County line. The report said Thomas followed the rental car in the Suzuki Samurai.

‘Put in Driver’s Seat’

At the pullout area, the coroner’s report said, “she was then allegedly placed in the driver’s seat (of the Suzuki), and gasoline was poured inside the vehicle and it was pushed over the side, and allegedly a burning rag was thrown inside the vehicle when it went over the side.”

The Suzuki tumbled end over end down the steep embankment, coroner’s investigators wrote, and came to rest upside down 60 feet below in the canyon. Evidence indicated that the woman was in her seat belt when the vehicle burst into flames.

Hall has studied the military’s case against his client, specifically investigative interviews with Thomas’ friend and neighbor, the man who has been granted immunity by military prosecutors to testify against Thomas.

According to Hall, this is what the friend told Naval investigators and what the prosecution alleges happened:

Thomas apparently had been at his neighbor’s house on the evening of Dec. 9. At some point, both returned to Thomas’ house. While the neighbor waited in the other room, Thomas went into the bedroom. The neighbor heard sounds of a struggle, and Thomas emerged and asked him to help dispose of Melinda’s bloody body.

Immunity for Star Witness

Hall says his client had nothing to do with Melinda’s death and asserts that Naval investigators may have made a grave mistake by giving the neighbor, who is their star witness, immunity to testify against Thomas.

When first questioned about the matter, Hall said, the neighbor said nothing about a struggle or being asked by Thomas to help get rid of the body.

“They may have given immunity to the wrong person,” Hall said.

Hall declined to be more specific. But he promised that the whole story would unfold during the hearing.

Passer-by Dan Graves was the first to spot the burning car in the dark canyon last December. He said he figured by the height of the flames that the car had not been burning for very long.

Graves, of Garden Grove, said he drove to a nearby ranger station and reported the burning Suzuki.

He said tire tracks from the vehicle were perpendicular to the highway, a fact he thought strange in a suicide case. The tracks, he said, clearly showed that the car rolled over the side of the embankment very slowly, because the tires never left the ground.

He said Naval investigators interviewed him in February or March.

“I always wondered how that car got over the side. Was it pushed or did someone slowly drive it over?” he asked.