Local News in Brief : Jury Learns Ex-Officer Had Earlier Conviction

Jurors who last month convicted a former Los Angeles police detective of a contract murder learned Monday that he and a fellow officer also had been convicted of attempting to torture, mutilate and kill an exotic dancer.

As the penalty phase of the trial for former Officer Richard Herman Ford began, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. O’Neill detailed a plot by Ford and another Los Angeles police officer, Robert Anthony Von Villas, to kill exotic dancer Joan Loguercio of Granada Hills in 1983.

Ford, 48, of Northridge and Von Villas, 44, of Simi Valley were convicted last month by separate Van Nuys Superior Court juries of murder and conspiracy in the death of Northridge businessman Thomas Weed, who disappeared in February, 1983. They face death or life in prison without parole.

The two officers, who together owned a Chatsworth auto repair shop, were convicted earlier this year of attempting to kill Loguercio to collect on a $100,000 insurance policy, O’Neill said. The conviction was not admissible during the murder trial because it had no bearing on the facts of that case.