3rd Suspect in Wayne Attack Is in Local Custody

A Beverly Hills private detective suspected of hiring two men to assault John Wayne’s daughter was flown into the country from Switzerland and taken into custody by Newport Beach police, authorities said Saturday.

Police maintain that O. Daniel Gal, 32, acted as a point man for Pomona surgeon Thomas A. Gionis in directing the Oct. 3, 1988, attack on Aissa Wayne, who was engaged in a protracted legal battle with Gionis over custody of their young daughter.

Gal, arrested by police in Switzerland in April on a $1-million arrest warrant, waived extradition proceedings, officials said. His decision to avoid potentially lengthy international legal proceedings over his return to the United States now raises the possibility that he may agree to cooperate with authorities in their continuing probe of the Wayne-Gionis case.

Gal was flown into Los Angeles International airport late Friday and handed over by U.S. marshals to Newport Beach police, according to Newport Beach Lt. Doug Fletcher.

He is likely to be arraigned in Orange County Municipal Court early this week, perhaps Monday, on several assault and conspiracy charges in connection with the attack on the 33-year-old Wayne and financier-friend Roger W. Luby, 53, at Luby’s Newport Beach home, officials said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans, who is prosecuting the Gionis case, declined to comment on Gal’s arrival in the United States, citing concern over pretrial publicity that might later be used against him by defense attorneys. Gionis’ lawyers have indicated that they may seek to move the surgeon’s upcoming trial out of Orange County, contending that the 35-year-old Gionis could not get a fair hearing here.

Investigators charge that Gionis, seeking to send a warning to his wife in hopes of securing custody of their now 2-year-old daughter, Anastasia, directed Gal to arrange the Oct. 3 attack. They cite two payments totaling $40,000 that Gionis made to Gal just a month before the attack, along with four telephone calls between the two men on the day of the attack.

Witnesses also have testified in a preliminary hearing that they saw Gal parked on the street near Luby’s walled estate on the morning of the assault. Inside the home, authorities say, two armed intruders bound and pistol-whipped Wayne and Luby, slashed Luby’s Achilles’ tendon, and left a foreboding death threat for the pair before they left.

At Gionis’ recent preliminary hearing, famed defense attorney F. Lee Bailey acknowledged that Gionis hired Gal to monitor his ex-wife during their rancorous custody proceedings, but he asserted that the private detective was acting as a “free agent”--without Gionis’ knowledge--in ordering the attack. He suggested that Gal had built up animosity toward Luby during the course of the not-so-secret surveillance operation.

In addition to Gal and Gionis, also charged in the attack are the two men who allegedly carried out the assault--Jeffrey K. Bouey, 35, of Simi Valley, and Jerrel L. Hintergardt, 37, of Burbank.

Hintergardt was arraigned Friday in Superior Court and is to be tried in the fall along with Gionis. Bouey has not yet had to undergo a preliminary hearing on the charges against him and has been cooperating with authorities in the case. He testified at Gionis’ preliminary hearing that Gal, in hiring him for the assault, told him that a client who was a physician wanted to “teach his wife a lesson.”

Gionis had won custody of his daughter in January when a judge ruled that Aissa Wayne was “emotionally immature” and less capable than her ex-husband of caring for the child. But the custody fight was reopened last month in light of the new criminal charges against Gionis. Wayne now has temporary custody, with Gionis--who now is out on bail--allowed monitored visitations.