Guest of Woman Arrested in Her Slaying : Radio Newscast Raises Suspicion

Sandra Sandor of Lake Elsinore said she first learned a murder suspect might be sleeping in her home when she turned on the radio Thursday morning.

The broadcast gave a description of the car and the license plate of murder victim Denise Marie Duerr, 21, of Garden Grove, whose body was believed found just over the Riverside County line Wednesday night.

Duerr had been missing for 3 days, and the radio reported that her black Pontiac Fiero, with its distinctive personalized license plates, CEEYA 3, still had not been recovered.

Unusual License Plates

Sandor recalled seeing unusual plates on the car that her husband’s stepson, Cameron Seaholm, had driven to her home when he came Monday for a visit.

“I had noticed those license plates on the car he (Seaholm) was driving, and when I heard the report on the radio . . . I went outside and checked the plates again,” Sandor said Thursday. “Then I got my daughter, Kathy, into my bedroom, locked the door, and called 911.”

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies responded to Sandor’s Lake Elsinore home and arrested Seaholm, 22, on suspicion of murdering Duerr, whom he knew as a friend in high school. Seaholm also was a high school chum of Duerr’s live-in boyfriend, Clyde Spontak, 22.

Spontak said Thursday night that Seaholm had been staying at his and Duerr’s Garden Grove apartment last week. “He came to us, crying, saying he had no place to go, and we let him sleep on our couch,” Spontak said. “He was all depressed because he said relatives he had been staying with didn’t want him there any more.”

Spontak said Seaholm left the couple’s apartment, without any notice, last Friday. “He just disappeared,” he said.

Spontak said Seaholm had never dated Duerr. “He was just a causal friend,” he said. “I knew him when we were going to Lake High School” in Garden Grove. Duerr, who attended Katella High in Anaheim and had been dating Spontak “exclusively since we were both 15,” also knew Seaholm during their high school days, Spontak said.

Spontak wept and sobbed as he spoke about Seaholm. “No, I didn’t consider Cameron (Seaholm) to be dangerous,” Spontak said. “Would I let someone dangerous stay in my own home?” He added that Seaholm “was a drifter” who sometimes stayed with his natural father in Long Beach and sometimes with his mother in Santa Ana.

But Spontak said he had no idea why the suspect might have wanted to harm Duerr. “No, he never, ever argued with Denise. . . . We were trying to help the guy,” he said, sobbing. “Then they find him with Denise’s car. What was he doing with her car?”

According to Sandra Sandor, 50, and her daughter, Kathy Harrison, 28, Seaholm was driving Duerr’s car when he arrived at the Sandor home in Lake Elsinore on Monday afternoon. Donald

Sandor, 58, who had previously been married to Seaholm’s mother, was not at home. Sandra Sandor said her husband has been in a Corona hospital recovering from diabetes-related ailments.

Sandra Sandor said she was not expecting a visit from Seaholm when he arrived. “He was waiting at my house when I got home from work on Monday afternoon,” she said. “I hadn’t seen him since last January.”

Kathy Harrison said Seaholm had parked the car--later positively identified by Riverside officers as being the one owned by Duerr--so it was not readily visible from the street.

Harrison said Seaholm brought no extra clothes with him for the visit and the clothes he was wearing were soiled and had stains, which he told her were from ice plants. “He asked me, ‘Do you know how to get out stains?’ ”

Harrison said Seaholm was calm and quiet during his 3-day visit with them in Lake Elsinore. “He seemed just like a gentleman,” she said. The two women said they had no reason to be suspicious about his visit.

But that changed dramatically Thursday morning, they said, when Sandor heard the radio broadcast about a body found in Santa Ana Canyon that was believed to be that of Duerr and the description of her missing car.

Sandor said she woke her daughter and told her about the radio report.

“At first we laughed, because this was just too bizarre to believe--that the person they were looking for was sleeping in my home, and I had cooked his dinner and washed his clothes,” Harrison said. “But pretty soon we got panicky.”

While Seaholm slept on a couch in the living room of the Sandor home, Harrison said the two women tiptoed out and unlocked outside doors so the sheriff’s deputies could get in. They also unplugged a telephone in the kitchen. Then they silently left the house through a back door and waited outside for the deputies to arrive.

Lt. Nick Padilla, in charge of investigations for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, said Seaholm was still asleep when deputies entered the house and arrested him without incident Thursday morning. The suspect first was sent to the Garden Grove police station but he was returned to Riverside County on Thursday afternoon.

“We’re not sure where the crime took place, but all the evidence we have is in Riverside County--that’s where the body was found,” Padilla said.

Duerr was last seen headed to the garage of her Garden Grove residence at 6:50 a.m. Monday, on her way to her job in Orange, which was about 15 minutes away by freeway. She never showed up for work. Neighbors who saw her Fiero leave the garage area of their apartment complex have said they did not notice who was driving.

Duerr’s body was discovered about 5:40 p.m. Wednesday by Ronald Gray, 23, of Buena Park, who had pulled off the busy Riverside Freeway at Green River Drive to let his two pit bull terriers walk on a little-used road near the Orange County-Riverside County line. The site, Fresno Creek Road, is only about 200 yards from the busy freeway, officers said, but it is concealed because of hills and vegetation.

Gray said as he waited for his dogs, he noticed a woman’s body lying in a small ditch where the pavement ends. The body was partially clothed. “She had on a shirt and that was all,” said Gray, who then rushed to notify authorities from a nearby gas station.

On Thursday, Gray discovered to his horror that he had known the murder victim.

“From the pictures I had seen, I thought she looked familiar,” he said. “Then when I saw pictures of her boyfriend (Spontak) on television, it rang a bell. I had lived in the same apartments in Anaheim as she did when she was in high school, and was living with her family. She would have been about 15 then, and even then she was going with that same boyfriend. I remember her as smiling all the time.”

Spontak, who had lived with Duerr since January, said, “The detectives came over to my house at 1:30 this morning (Thursday) and said that there was a bracelet on her hand that had her name. This is the most horrible thing I ever went through.”

Spontak said Seaholm had an erratic employment record. After leaving high school, Seaholm joined the Army but was discharged about 6 months later because of a motorcycle injury, Spontak said.

Spontak added that Seaholm next joined the Navy but said he was quickly discharged over incorrect information given at the time of his enlistment.

Sandor and Harrison said Seaholm had told them during his 3-day visit in Lake Elsinore that he was enlisting in the Marines and was waiting to hear from recruiting officials.

Padilla, of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, said Thursday night he did not know whether Spontak had a criminal record.

“This investigation is not completed by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “We don’t know right now if there is just this single suspect or if others were involved. We still do not know how the victim died. The autopsy won’t be completed until after 5 p.m.” (today).

Padilla, who was at the Fresno Creek scene late Wednesday night, said there were nothing readily apparent to indicate the cause of Duerr’s death.

Spontak said late Thursday night that he now believes someone was hiding in the garage area and attacked Duerr when she went to get into her car Monday morning.

Sobbing, he said, “How could someone do this? She was the sweetest woman that ever lived.”

Times staff photographer Cliff Otto contributed to this story.