D.A. Sifts Evidence in Poison-Pen Case

They called themselves Rocky and Bullwinkle.

They are accused of a crime that is more the stuff of tabloids than of Saturday morning cartoons: a mass mailing of extortion letters threatening the lives of 265 Antelope Valley political leaders, professionals and business people.

Before their arrests in Las Vegas last Thanksgiving, former Rockwell aerospace technicians Richard Faroni and Roman (Moose) Makuch inhabited a nocturnal and obsessive shadow world of weapons, movies, science fiction, law enforcement, computers and surveillance technology, according to court testimony.

With pretrial motions set to begin this month, prosecutors and investigators are still trying to separate fact from fantasy in the two men’s lives. “We have many, many hours of work left to do, “ said Stephen L. Cooley, head prosecutor in the Antelope Valley office of the Los Angeles County district attorney.

Widespread alarm in Lancaster and Palmdale has faded since Thanksgiving, when the arrests of Makuch and Faroni brought a media invasion to the high desert that included “Unsolved Mysteries” and other national television programs with a taste for bizarre criminal fare.

But seven months later, prosecutors continue slogging through documents in search of hard evidence that Faroni, a slightly built 26-year-old, and Makuch, a hulking 27-year-old, are guilty of conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion and mailing threatening letters. They each face a maximum of eight years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors must still show a motive behind the strange plot to demand money from prominent Antelope Valley residents with death threats. Other questions remain: How did the conspirators plan to collect, if at all?

And the suspects have out-of-town alibis for the period when the letters were mailed, so who else was involved?

Defense attorney William A. Clark, one of the few Antelope Valley lawyers who did not receive an extortion letter, said Faroni and Makuch will be absolved at trial.

“The evidence they have is very tenuous,” Clark said.

He is defending Faroni, while Van Nuys attorney Carl Burkow is defending Makuch.

“It looks good going in, but when you get down to it, there’s nothing that links these guys to the crime,” Clark said.

Cooley described the evidence as eclectic and “rather unusual.”

Part of the difficulty is that Makuch and Faroni allegedly crafted a plot to fulfill their frequently expressed interest in committing the perfect crime, Cooley said.

“There is no bit of evidence that is conclusive or telling in itself,” he said.

“But there is a fabric, a pattern when you combine the evidence as a whole, that points toward their guilt.”

The letters mailed in early November went to hotel and restaurant owners, attorneys, doctors, realtors and public figures such as former Lancaster Mayor Louis Bozigian, Lancaster businessman and present state Republican Party Chairman Frank Visco and former Lancaster City Manager James Gilley.

Childishly Malevolent

The letters were crude, strewn with expletives, childishly malevolent. They demanded that amounts generally ranging from $200,000 to $600,000 be sent to various names and addresses. Some letters instructed victims to gather their cash along with cash to be received from others, purchase walkie-talkies and drive repeatedly to Las Vegas until contacted.

The letters threatened victims and their families with death by hideous means, claiming that the authors had poisoned former Lancaster Mayor Nick Maluccio, who died of a heart attack in a Palmdale restaurant in June, 1988.

“The police cannot protect you every minute of every month, day and year,” the letters said. “But we’ll stay after you FOREVER. . . . We are experts in poison. We can put toxic chemicels (sic) in your toothpaste or glue laced with poison cyanide on envelopes and stamps that you lick.”

The letters were postmarked at the nearby Kern County town of Mojave and alluded to personal details about the victims, including their children and cars, which indicated that they were being watched.

Attorney Cathrin L. De Voe, for example, was addressed as “Miss Cat,” a nickname she had not used since teaching exercise classes several years ago.

“I had my moments of paranoia for a while,” she said. “At least half of the victims were extremely fearful. The other half took it to be a ludicrous joke.”

Some of those who took it seriously hired bodyguards, bought guns and left the area temporarily. Several victims became ill from the shock, said Cooley, who believes that personal information was gleaned from newspapers and other public documents as well as actual surveillance.

Task Force Formed

With consternation mounting among the prominent people of the Antelope Valley, the Sheriff’s Department put together a task force of detectives to investigate. They moved fast.

A caller on the We Tip hot line reported that Lancaster residents Makuch and Faroni had bragged about sending the letters. The pair had left town sometime in early November, but when they applied for Nevada driver’s licenses in Las Vegas, detectives were able to track them down by computer records. They were arrested Nov. 24.

Among the possessions seized in Lancaster and Las Vegas were two walkie-talkies of the type described in the letters, papers with the names of several victims, books on electronic surveillance, computer printouts with lists of cars and a 9-millimeter pistol belonging to Makuch, who acquaintances said always carried a gun.

At a lengthy pretrial hearing in March, Cooley conceded that he did not have a “smoking computer,” physical evidence linking the two suspects directly to the crime. He even conceded that he believed an alibi presented in defense testimony by Faroni’s father--that Faroni and Makuch were visiting Faroni’s family in Connecticut during the days before and after the mailings.

But Cooley called the alibi, along with the suspects’ abrupt move to Las Vegas upon their return from Connecticut, suspiciously coincidental.

“This is not the normal way people leave town,” he said. “These guys were up to something. . . . A couple of guys left under strange circumstances who have been bragging about surveillance and end up in Las Vegas where all the money is supposed to go with all the equipment they are supposed to have to communicate with the victims.”

Numerous Lists

Prosecution witnesses included neighbors, co-workers, friends and classmates of the suspects. They testified that Makuch and Faroni compiled numerous lists: names and addresses of co-workers at Rockwell, possible fund-raising sources for the Antelope Valley Film Commission on which they served and local attorneys. A bail bondsman with whom the two men hoped to go into business testified that he had told them about obtaining information through real estate records and other public records.

Lawrence Mock, who worked with Makuch and Faroni as a technician on the B-1 bomber project at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, testified that the three often concocted fantastic scenarios for the “perfect crime” during coffee breaks on the night shift. Faroni and Makuch were laid off by Rockwell about two years ago.

Other witnesses testified that the two bragged about their expertise with high-tech eavesdropping equipment and clandestine surveillance that they were conducting.

Testimony showed that they had contact with at least one victim, a Palmdale realtor whose son played on a Little League baseball team that Makuch helped coach. At a college photography class, the two befriended the son of a prominent produce merchant who later received an extortion letter.

And an editor of a local newspaper testified that his comparison of the writing style and grammatical patterns of the extortion letters and a short story written by Makuch suggested that they had been written by the same person.

Defense attorneys objected strenuously.

“That short story analysis isn’t going to float,” Clark said. “They are going to need someone with more credentials at trial.”

Portrait Emerges

Clark acknowledged that a portrait emerges of the inseparable Makuch and Faroni as secretive, nocturnal, military veterans with a penchant for discussing schemes such as becoming private investigators, taking elaborate revenge on nosy neighbors and raising money to establish an Antelope Valley film studio.

“They are rather odd characters,” he said. “They live in a fanciful world.”

But that is no crime, he said. The prosecution “is going to have to come up with an explanation as to why they would do it and how they would get the money. All the money’s going around in a great big circle.”

Clark said there are innocent explanations for apparently suspicious circumstances. For example, he said, the defendants had a list of local attorneys because they planned to go into business as process servers. They went to Las Vegas because they had been laid off for almost a year and were looking for jobs, he said.

Most significantly, Clark said, he has yet to see anyone offer a convincing motive for the plot.

Cooley said he will expand on arguments that Faroni, Makuch and several of their acquaintances resented prominent area residents. For example, he said, because of their membership in the Antelope Valley Film Commission, they knew of the frustration of its director, Stephanie Abrahamson, who testified that she had been stymied in efforts to get financial support to attract movie companies to Lancaster and Palmdale.

Confuse Authorities

Such resentment was part of a “variety of motives” that are “not necessarily clear-headed and logical,” Cooley said. He said he believes that there were 15 to 20 actual targets of the plot and that the rest of the victims were included only to confuse authorities.

Clark said the prosecution must supply the “missing link” of who mailed the letters and how the conspirators intended to collect the money.

Cooley said he believes that the arrests came as Makuch and Faroni were preparing the next phase of the plot, in which they would have chosen a smaller number of victims and given further payment instructions. He said investigators still hope to find the accomplice or accomplices.

Former Mayor Bozigian is among the victims who say they believe that a longtime resident or residents with longstanding grudges aided the criminals.

“I think it was someone who felt vengeful and vindictive, disgruntled members of the community,” he said. “I don’t think all the facts have come out.”