Long, Winding Road to Justice in ’83 Killing : Brothers to Face Trial in Alleged Conspiracy That Led to Hawthorne Woman’s Death

In 1983, Catherine Stroup was found slain in her Hawthorne apartment. Her husband was acquitted of murder charges. On Monday, more than five years after her death, another jury will assemble in Torrance to consider murder charges against Peter Leach. The story will not be nearly as simple the second time around.

The bickering husband and wife. The argument that got out of hand. The struggle in the apartment. And then, the gunshots.

To homicide detectives who visited a Hawthorne apartment house on April 5, 1983, these seemed to be the familiar elements of another case of domestic violence.

Catherine Elizabeth Stroup, 45, lay dead on the floor, and it seemed obvious to several neighbors, as well as to investigators, that her husband, James, had killed her. The most convincing piece of evidence came from an elderly apartment house manager, who testified that James Stroup had emerged from the apartment and said: “I think I just killed my wife.”

But at his trial in Torrance Superior Court, Stroup denied killing his wife, and the jurors acquitted him. Now, authorities say, it was a good thing they did.

Separate Trials Set

On Monday, five years and five months after Catherine Stroup’s death, another jury will be assembled in Torrance to consider murder charges. The story will not be nearly as simple the second time around.

Charged with the killing are two brothers--Peter Alan Leach, 27, and Paul Curtis Leach, 25--accused by the district attorney’s office of a murder-for-hire plot that allegedly included the Stroups’ son-in-law. Peter Leach will be tried first.

Both brothers have pleaded not guilty, and if convicted both face possible sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Duarte will allege a conspiracy that he says began in the desert 165 miles east of Hawthorne. There, the Stroups had a weekend home east of Twentynine Palms, where they would retreat when James finished his shift at a Los Angeles dairy and Catherine was done with her job tending bar.

In a recent interview, James Stroup described the desert around the home as a patchwork of old homesteads where most people live in cabins and mobile homes on 5-acre lots. The roads are dirt or gravel.

Homes beyond the reach of the Twentynine Palms Water District get their water by truck, an inconvenience for many residents but an opportunity for the Stroup family.

Started Family Business

When James and Catherine bought their home in 1980, they also purchased a truck to haul water there. Soon, neighbors were asking the Stroups to deliver their water too.

There was money to be made in the water business. Stroup formed S & S Water Co. with his son-in-law, Michael Seawright, the husband of his eldest daughter, Cheryl.

Stroup kept his job in Los Angeles to raise money for the company while Seawright operated it, but Stroup said he hoped one day to make enough on the business to allow himself and his wife to retire.

But S & S Water never amounted to much. The high cost of maintaining the firm’s two tanker trucks absorbed most of the revenue, Stroup said.

Still, Duarte said he will argue that control of the beleaguered water company was the motive for murder, and that it was Michael Seawright who ordered the crime.

Seawright has steadfastly denied any involvement.

Duarte’s scenario is supported by the Leach brothers’ alleged confessions, which are part of the court record. But the statements, taken by sheriff’s detectives within a few days of each other in 1984, raise two legal problems.

Son-in-Law Released

First, they may implicate Seawright in a conspiracy to commit murder, even though he has not been charged with a crime. The district attorney’s office said the Leaches’ statements are not enough to charge Seawright with murder, since the law requires that an accomplice’s testimony be corroborated by independent evidence.

Seawright was arrested on suspicion of murder but was released for lack of such evidence.

(Seawright filed a lawsuit in 1985 against Los Angeles County and sheriff’s homicide detectives for false arrest, false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit is pending.)

Also, defense attorneys have questioned whether the brothers really made the statements attributed to them and have asked Torrance Superior Court Judge John Shook to exclude their statements from the trial. Even if the brothers did make the statements, their lawyers contend, they are inadmissible as evidence because the Leaches never waived their rights to have attorneys present during questioning.

If the Leaches’ statements are admitted as evidence, they will present jurors with a striking picture of callousness and greed.

Peter Leach also lived in the desert and occasionally helped repair trucks for S & S Water. In his statement, he talked about visiting the Stroups’ home and said he liked Catherine Stroup. “She was a real nice lady,” he said.

But he also told investigators that Michael Seawright wanted the water company for himself. “He offered me half of the water business if Mr. Stroup was out of the picture,” Peter said, according to the statement. Seawright “knew the company was not making a lot of money but said that was because the Stroups were taking most of the money.”

Girlfriend Testified

The son-in-law also promised the brothers as much as $80,000 and a lifetime supply of free water, according to Paul Leach’s girlfriend, who testified at the brothers’ preliminary hearing.

Catherine Stroup would become an inadvertent victim, according to Peter’s statement. It gives the following account:

The brothers left Twentynine Palms early the moring of April 5, 1983, and drove toward Los Angeles with a .22-caliber pistol that Michael Seawright had given them. Seawright had also told Peter about the couple’s work schedules so he would know when to find them at home.

But, according to Peter Leach’s statement, he decided not to commit the murder but instead to use the information from Seawright to burglarize the Stroups’ apartment. He said he had been told that the couple often kept as much as $2,000 in cash at home and he planned to take the money and leave, without harming anyone.

The brothers waited until 10 a.m., expecting that Catherine Stroup would have left for her bar-tending job and that her husband would still not be home from his graveyard shift at the dairy. But when they arrived at the apartment, they found Mrs. Stroup still at home.

Peter had met the woman before during his work for S & S Water. He told her that he needed to borrow $20 for gas money to return to Twentynine Palms.

Shooting Recounted

The woman was getting the money, when Paul Leach “went loony,” his brother said, and began choking her from behind. Peter Leach picked up a red, heart-shaped pillow with “Jim & Cathy” stitched on the front and held it over the muzzle of the pistol.

“I don’t know why I did that but anyway she grabbed for the pillow,” Leach said in the statement. “And when she did, the .22 went off and shot her and I sort of blanked out because I shot her a few more times and I don’t know why.”

Catherine Stroup was shot four times. The gun turned out to be her own.

Paul Leach’s girlfriend, Michelle Dyer, said at a preliminary hearing that he had confessed to the killing. She said Paul told her that Mrs. Stroup had begged the brothers for mercy. “She yelled . . . begged for her life,” Dyer said he told her. “She said she wanted to live. . . . She said to take the money, take whatever you want.”

The Leaches heard a knock at the door--apartment manager Joanne Trudell testified that she came to the apartment after a neighbor reported hearing an argument--and the brothers escaped out a back window, their statements say.

Half an hour later, James Stroup returned home from work and walked into an incriminating situation.

Witnesses would testify at Stroup’s trial that he and his wife had argued frequently. A next-door neighbor told jurors she was sure that it was Stroup who was fighting with his wife the morning of the murder. And Trudell’s husband said he was sure that Stroup stepped from the apartment and said, “I think I just killed my wife.”

What he actually said, Stroup told the jury, was, “I think someone shot my wife.”

Stroup, who spent seven months in jail before his acquittal, said he has been asked not to discuss the case because he will be a prosecution witness at the trial, which is expected to last a month.

The Leaches reportedly returned to Twentynine Palms and buried the gun in the back yard of their home. With James Stroup on trial for murder, the brothers appeared to be in the clear.

But greed was their downfall, Duarte said.

They eventually dug up the gun and sold it.

When a small-time hoodlum was arrested in Lakewood a year after the killing, he was carrying the .22, Duarte said. Detectives found that the gun was registered to Catherine Stroup and that its ballistic characteristics matched the gun used in her murder.

When detectives traced the gun from Robertson back to the Leaches, Duarte said, they decided they had found the killers.