Ex-Mental Patient Faces Murder Trial
A former mental patient was ordered Friday to stand trial in the slayings of two Universal Studios guards he reportedly said God told him to kill.
Los Angeles Municipal Judge Elva R. Soper ordered Nathan N. Trupp, 42, to stand trial after a one-hour preliminary hearing in which a security guard and a sheriff’s deputy described the Dec. 1 shootings and recounted Trupp’s explanation.
Soper ordered Trupp to be arraigned Aug. 17 on charges that he killed guards Jeren Beeks, 27, of La Crescenta and Armando Torres, 18, of Los Angeles after they turned him away from the studio.
Trupp is also accused of slaying three people two days before the Universal City killings. Those killings occurred in a bagel shop near where he lived in Albuquerque, N.M.
Abelardo Solarez, another studio guard, testified Friday that Trupp casually shot the two victims at the studio’s main gate, shortly after they turned him away when he asked to see actor Michael Landon. “He kept saying that someone sent him to kill the two guards,” Solarez said. “I asked him who it was and he said, ‘God.’ ”
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