Prosecutor Calls 2 Ex-Policemen Contract Killers

A prosecutor in closing arguments Tuesday called two former Los Angeles police officers accused of murdering a Northridge businessman “professional contract killers . . . masquerading as police officers.”

“Richard Ford and Robert Von Villas have become the very enemy that they swore to protect us against,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. O’Neill told a Van Nuys Superior Court jury during Ford’s trial on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Ford, 48, of Northridge and Von Villas, 44, of Simi Valley are on trial before separate juries for the killing of Thomas Weed, 52, a former debt collector who disappeared from his Northridge apartment on Feb. 23, 1983.

Prosecutors allege that the two officers murdered Weed and buried him in the desert in exchange for $20,000 paid by the victim’s former wife, Janie E. Ogilvie, 45, of Canoga Park.

O’Neill described in detail how Weed’s previously punctual monthly payments for car and rent, and contacts with friends and family members, abruptly stopped after his disappearance. Weed’s body has never been found.

O’Neill reminded jurors of testimony from Ogilvie that Ford and Von Villas came to her house disguised in wigs and makeup and offered to “take care” of Weed in exchange for money.

He pointed to a bank deposit slip found in Von Villas’ car with the phone numbers of Ogilvie’s home, office and son’s telephone extension and the notation “Ros and Res.” O’Neill contended that the slip corroborates Ogilvie’s testimony that she was instructed by Von Villas in a phone call to drop $7,500 into a car parked behind a gas station at Roscoe and Reseda boulevards as the first of three installment payments for Weed’s death.

The prosecutor played for jurors excerpts from a secretly recorded jail-house conversation in which Ford told his wife, Lillian: “There’s no body” and “There’s no connection to me.” “What you hear is the voice and the mind of an assassin at work,” O’Neill said.

The two former officers could receive the death penalty if convicted.