Boyfriend of Slain Woman Freed After Lab Tests Show Him Innocent

The boyfriend of Denise Marie Duerr was cleared of murder charges Wednesday after laboratory and lie detector tests demonstrated he was not involved in the brutal stabbing death of the 21-year-old Garden Grove woman, a Riverside County deputy district attorney said.

Robert Clyde Spontak, 22, of Garden Grove, was released late Wednesday from Riverside County Jail, where he had been held since April.

Spontak, who emerged from the jail about 8:20 p.m. wearing a purple sweat shirt and neon green shorts, said he was happy to be free and that he had spent many hours thinking about Duerr.

“It was such a nightmare, I could never have had such a bad dream,” said Spontak, who had wept before television cameras as he proclaimed his innocence in the days following Duerr’s death.

Spontak, who said he plans to return to Orange County and seek work, added, “I’d spend the rest of my life in jail if I could get her back.”

Early Wednesday, his attorney, Thomas Brown of Westminster, said, “It’s been a long haul. . . . He (Spontak) really is very concerned that the person who did this be punished.”

Investigators now believe Cameron Charles Seaholm, 22, a high school classmate of the couple who also was charged in Duerr’s murder, is responsible for the crime, Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel C. Lough said.

Seaholm is accused of stabbing Duerr about 20 times with an ice pick, wrapping her body in a sheet, putting her in the trunk of her car and dumping her in the hills near Corona, Lough said. Seaholm remains in custody in Riverside County.

Seaholm, a drifter who sometimes stayed in the apartment shared by Duerr and Spontak, told police he stole Duerr’s 1984 Fiero while high on cocaine and discovered her body in the trunk after the car got a flat tire. Seaholm admitted to dumping the victim’s partially decomposed body, but insisted he was not involved in her slaying.

Gary L. Proctor, Seaholm’s lawyer in Santa Ana, did not return calls seeking comment.

Wednesday’s developments in the case provided little comfort to the Duerr family, some of whom expressed doubts about Spontak’s innocence.

“I still don’t know,” said Ronald Ducharme, Duerr’s stepfather. “It doesn’t bring the kid back.”

Joseph Duerr, Denise Duerr’s uncle and manager of the electronics store where she had worked, said he is taking a “wait-and-see” attitude.

“If he’s guilty of nothing else, he’s guilty of having Denise in that environment that caused the whole thing,” Duerr said of Spontak. “I don’t plan on having any contact with him at all.”

In fact, “that environment” was responsible for the delay in dropping charges against Spontak, Lough said.

Police initially believed that arguments between Duerr and Spontak over his suspected drug dealing led to her death. Spontak had lied to authorities about his whereabouts at the time of Duerr’s death, leading to his arrest, Lough said. Investigators also linked Spontak to the crime because Duerr is believed to have been killed in the garage of the apartment shared by the couple.

“I believe (Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies) had probable cause to arrest him and I still believe that,” Lough said.

But after a few months in jail, Spontak provided investigators with another account that was verified by neighbors and other acquaintances, Lough said.

“He gave us chapter and verse and explained why he had lied to us,” said Lough, who declined to provide details of Spontak’s subsequent account except to say that investigators were able to confirm his information.

Spontak “wasn’t in a position to explain his whereabouts because of his other criminal activity.”

Seaholm told investigators that he and Spontak had planned to sell about a half-pound of cocaine about the time of the killing.

Brown agreed that if his client “had gotten his story straight in the beginning, I don’t think he would have been taken into custody.”

Spontak also passed a lie detector test, Lough said.

“I would never act upon that independently. . . . But it did contribute to” the charges bring dropped, Lough said.

While investigators were working to verify Spontak’s new account, laboratory tests were under way on bloodstained sheets and other physical evidence from the crime. The tests revealed the presence of body fluids other than Spontak’s on Duerr’s body.

A pretrial hearing for Seaholm, who has pleaded innocent, is scheduled for Sept. 25.

Times staff writer Thomas Becher contributed to this story.