Rape-Murder Trial : ‘Count’ Bypasses Lawyer, Pens Guilty Plea to Judge

A 30-year-old drifter who faces a possible death penalty in the rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman he met at a West Hollywood nightclub told a judge this week that he wanted to plead guilty and receive a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Edmund Arne Matthews, known as “The Count” because he used to haunt the nightclub scene in a black cape, is charged with the 1985 murder of Lisa Ann Mather of West Los Angeles, whose body was found above Coldwater Canyon. Matthews is charged with murdering Mathers during the commission of a rape, a special circumstance that would make him eligible for the death penalty.

Mather vanished about 1 a.m. on Jan. 12, 1985, after she and friends went to the Whiskey a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard. Her friends said they last saw her talking to a tall man with sprayed, teased hair.

Nearly two years later, a human skull, spine and leg bones were found by a hiker above Coldwater Canyon. The remains were identified as Mather’s, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rosalie L. Morton said. Matthews later was found to be living in a tent near the site where Mather’s bones were discovered.

Police believe Matthews killed Mather at the remote site soon after she disappeared.

Morton said Matthews was convicted of taking another woman to the Coldwater Canyon campsite in 1984, where he tied her up, raped her and threatened to kill her with a machete.

Matthews told women he was a celebrity, a drummer with the band of rock singer Ted Nugent or the live-in boyfriend of Nancy Sinatra, Morton said.

Matthews is scheduled to stand trial for Mather’s murder on Sept. 28. In a court appearance earlier this week to set a trial date, Matthews tried to hand a note to San Fernando Superior Court Judge John H. Majors and then turned to prosecutor Morton and asked if he could make a plea bargain.

He said he wanted to plead guilty so that he could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to Deputy Public Defender Tim Murphy, who intercepted the note.

A guilty plea at this stage of the proceedings would eliminate the need for a jury trial and the possibility of a death penalty verdict.

Murphy would not disclose what was said in the one-page handwritten note except to say that Matthews has been suicidal and is “tired and depressed being in jail.”

Majors ruled that a plea bargain could not be entered into without Matthews first having the opportunity to confer with his attorney, who is on vacation. Murphy, who was standing in for Matthews’ court-appointed public defender, Roy L. Wallen, said that a decision on the matter might be reached at Matthews’ next court appearance Aug. 24.