Grisly Discoveries Spark Caution Instead of Alarm

Allan Rowe, a math teacher, goes on nature hikes in Griffith Park at least three times a week, examining the plants and, in the evening, gazing at the stars. The hiking trail takes Rowe and dozens of others within a short distance of where park rangers Tuesday discovered the bodies of two men in a van parked on a hillside.

The unsettling discovery brought to five the number of bodies found in the park in just 10 days. And it raised questions about safety among many of the regular visitors to the 4,000-acre urban oasis.

“I hear a lot of people talking about it and saying they would not like to hike alone,” said Rowe, a Sierra Club member who has been trudging up and down Griffith Park’s hills for six years. “I guess they think there’s safety in numbers.”

Los Angeles police and park rangers see the unusual rash of body-finds as a fluke more than an established pattern. And they suggest that crime in the park is actually less than might be expected, given its size, remote areas and hordes of visitors. But they caution that a park sitting in the middle of Los Angeles can never be immune from urban crime.

Only the two men found Tuesday night may have actually been murdered in the park, according to police, who identified the victims as Raul Mendez, 33, and Roberto Garcia, 31. Autopsies on Friday determined that Mendez died from a slash wound to the neck and Garcia died from multiple stab wounds to the neck.

The other deaths involved a young Santa Ana girl, believed killed elsewhere, whose body was dumped in a trash can north of the Griffith Observatory, and a couple who apparently died six years ago after carrying out a satanic murder-suicide pact.

Most of the Los Angeles residents who visit the park to play tennis, golf, picnic, jog, walk their dogs or fly their kites are careful about being alone at night.

Many of the roads and trails that wind up the hills offer spectacular views of downtown skyscrapers and sprawling valleys. But many of the roads are also isolated, the remote hillsides covered with sheer rock faces or thick brush.

“You won’t find me up on that hill after dark,” said Gil Bond, an attorney who has been exercising his yellow Labrador retriever, Sam, at the park for four years. “I always was a little bit careful. But I’m much more reluctant to be up in those hills after sunset.”

Park Regulars

Bond is part of a clique of people who have become friendly through regular jaunts with their dogs in the mornings and evenings. They usually meet near the tennis courts in Vermont Canyon and walk along a gentle slope that rises in the foothills.

“We all look out for each other,” Heidi Hilleary, who works for a veterinarian, said as she ran after her blond cocker spaniel, Valley, in the hazy sunshine.

“People are concerned, but not to the point of staying away,” said 30-year-old tennis instructor Marianne Zaugg. “It’s when it gets dark that most stuff happens.”

The park closes at 10 p.m. and gates are drawn across its nine entrances. But authorities concede it is not too difficult for after-hour visitors to elude detection. Transients have lived in the park for years.

To many, the park is an expansive refuge in a teeming city, a place to escape, relax, enjoy nature. Given to the city more than 90 years ago, it is the largest municipal park in the United States entirely surrounded by urban development.

The park’s rugged ravines and wilderness, coupled with easy freeway access, make it susceptible to use as a dumping ground, authorities say.

Nevertheless, the incidence of reported crime is relatively low, police say. According to police, four bodies were found in the park last year--two murders and two suicides--and since Jan. 1, 1987, police recorded 1 rape and 3 attempted rapes, 133 burglaries and thefts from cars, 57 stolen cars, 8 battery-type assaults and 6 assaults with a deadly weapon.

Decline in Crime

Overall, crime in the Northeast Division that includes the park has declined slightly in the last two years, police said.

Police Lt. Richard LeGarra, who oversees the detective unit charged with the Griffith Park area, said that given the enormous size of the park and its huge volume of visitors--estimated at 10 million a year--crime is “not too bad.”

He attributes that to the number of ranger and police patrols. The city earlier this year elevated the status of the rangers to peace officer, which gives them more enforcement power. And there are plans to add five rangers to the present staff of nine. Rangers issue tickets or warnings for public drinking, lewd conduct and abandoned cars--perennial problems at the park.

“When there’s crime in the city of Los Angeles, there’s crime that ends up in the park. It’s a reality,” said Albert Torres, a senior ranger who has worked at the park for five years.

“I’m sure for the regular users of the park, it (discovery of the bodies) heightens their awareness,” Torres said. “I’m sure that now you have a lot of people thinking. And that’s good.”