Police Arrest Wife of Man Suspected of Killing Composer

A woman whose husband was arrested in the fatal stabbing of a Hollywood Hills television composer has also been taken into custody in connection with the murder, Los Angeles police said Friday.

Michelle Purugganan, 20, was arrested late Thursday night in a Riverside motel room she was sharing with the couple’s two small children. Riverside police found her at the Arlington Motor Lodge only four hours after her husband, Juanito Pascua Purugganan, was arrested in connection with last week’s slaying of 29-year-old composer Doug Timm, said Detective Rick Swanston of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Their 2 1/2-year-old daughter and 10-month-old son were being cared for by grandparents in Santa Ana, Swanston said.

The couple is being held without bail on suspicion of murder. They are expected to be arraigned next week, but no date has been set.

Juanito Purugganan, 29, was arrested Thursday about 6 p.m. while driving Timm’s sports car through Riverside, but Michelle and the children were not with him. Swanston said Purugganan directed police to his wife and children.

The detective alleged that the couple killed Timm to rob him of the expensive recording equipment the composer kept in his two-story home. He said police are also investigating the possibility that the suspects may have been involved in similar crimes in Los Angeles County and surrounding areas, but he declined to elaborate.

The detective said the partially decomposed body of Timm, who worked on scores for television programs such as “The New Mike Hammer” and “Designing Women,” was found Wednesday at the bottom of a living room stairwell in his home in the 6900 block of Camrose Drive.

Swanston said Timm was stabbed several times in the upper torso--probably with a 12-inch butcher knife recovered from his home--either on July 21 or July 22.

Timm, who lived alone but was engaged, had invited the Purugganans to his home following a “chance meeting” in Hollywood, Swanston said.

“It looks like he had known them for a very short period of time, probably less than a week,” the detective said.

The day before the Purugganans were arrested, Swanston said, police officers recovered “several thousand dollars worth” of the dead composer’s keyboards and digital recording equipment from the Long Beach home of an acquaintance of the suspects. The man said the Purugganans sold him the items, the officer said.

“The man who bought the equipment became suspicious about the circumstance and started making inquiries,” Swanston said. “Eventually, he and the police made contact.”

After Timm’s body was found, the man’s statements helped police track down Juanito, who was arrested Thursday as he drove Timm’s black 1987 Toyota MR-2 sports car.

Swanston described the couple as drifters who had recently returned to Los Angeles after living for several years in Hawaii, where they worked as a waiter and waitress.

“They seemed to be very transient,” Swanston said Friday. “Apparently, in the last few months, they have just been street people.”

He said the Purugganans were married three years ago--when Juanito divorced Michelle’s mother to marry her.

“He had been with Michelle’s mother for about six or seven years,” Swanston said. “He was (Michelle’s) stepfather for a period of time, but he left her mother for the daughter.”