Botched Heist Led to Death, Juries Told

What began as an “easy money” scheme by a disgruntled former gas station employee turned into a bungled armed robbery that left an Inglewood police officer dead, the prosecution said as a murder trial opened in Torrance Superior Court on Friday for two defendants.

Joevone Elster, 24, and Van Otis Wilson, 22, both of Los Angeles, have pleaded not guilty to murder and robbery charges that could bring them 25 years to life in prison.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Lenhart said the “evil plot” unfolded on March 31, 1988 when five friends took two cars to the gas station at Manchester Boulevard and Ash Avenue in Los Angeles. They waited there until about 10 a.m., when Masih Modani, a money courier, drove up to the station, collected the cash receipts and headed down Manchester into Inglewood. The five followed Modani, forced him to stop his car and robbed him at gunpoint, Lenhart said.

Minutes after the holdup, Sgt. George Aguilar, an undercover narcotics investigator, drove by, picked up Modani and began pursuing the defendants. As he pulled up next to Modani’s stolen car in an attempt to cut it off, shots rang out and Aguilar was killed.

Police say the bullet that killed Aguilar, the first Inglewood police officer to be murdered in the line of duty in the department’s 81-year history, was fired by Leslie Holget of Los Angeles. Police say Holget died that night after he led officers on a 45-mile chase that ended when he pulled to the side of the road in Newhall and shot himself.

Although police say Elster and Wilson did not pull the trigger that killed Aguilar, they are charged with his murder because he died in the course of the robbery in which they were allegedly involved.

The other two involved in the heist have already been convicted of murder. A 16-year-old juvenile was found guilty of robbery and first-degree murder last year and was sentenced to the California Youth Authority until he is 25. Patrick Anthony Carr, 21, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in June and agreed to testify in the trial of Elster and Wilson. He will be sentenced later this month.

While forgoing opening statements, attorneys for the defendants offered sketchy details of their defense in interviews.

“My man was not involved,” said Robert A. Welbourn, the attorney for Elster. Welbourn said Elster was in a separate car and was not at the scene of the shooting.

Bruce McCaslin, Wilson’s attorney, said his client, although he was in the car with Holget, did not kill Aguilar. McCaslin suggested that the robbery had already ended when Aguilar was shot and only the deceased Holget can be held responsible for the officer’s death.

Robbery Planned for Weeks

“It’s clear from the evidence that Holget fired the gun that killed Sgt. Aguilar,” McCaslin said.

In the prosecution’s opening statement, Lenhart told two separate juries, one for each defendant, that Elster planned the robbery several weeks after he had been fired from a cashier’s position there.

Leonhardt gave this account:

Elster recruited the others to rob the station. After staking it out for three days, the defendants on March 31 followed Modani’s car down Manchester Boulevard in two vehicles. Holget and Wilson forced Modani out of his car at gunpoint at the intersection of Manchester and Eucalyptus Avenue. The men stole Modani’s car and fled in the three vehicles with more than $2,000.

Soon after the robbery, Modani spotted Aguilar, whom he knew as an occasional customer at the station, and flagged him down. Aguilar, a 15-year veteran, radioed for help and pursued the robbers with Modani in the passenger seat of his unmarked police car.

As the cars sped south on La Brea Avenue, Aguilar tried to pull alongside Modani’s stolen vehicle at Arbor Vitae Street and was hit in the chest by gunfire that passed through the car’s door.

Wilson was found by police soon afterward, hiding in the stairway of a nearby apartment complex with the stolen money. Elster was arrested after he contacted KTLA reporter Warren Wilson and arranged to give himself up to officials of the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

The prosecution’s first witness Friday was Aguilar’s widow, Rebecca, who testified that her husband left the house early that morning to attend a police training seminar after saying goodby to her and the couple’s young son, Christopher.

’ . . . He Was Dead’

When asked when she saw her husband next, Rebecca Aguilar began crying. “I saw him in the hospital, and he was dead,” she said.

On a request from the defense, Judge John P. Shook asked Rebecca Aguilar to remain on call as a witness and therefore not observe the proceedings, a move that Leonhardt later called “a ruse to keep her out of the presence of the jury.”

The judge also granted a pretrial motion by the prosecution to exclude any mention of the cause of Holget’s death.

The dual juries, a technique used occasionally with multiple defendants, were impaneled at the request of the prosecution in order to combine two trials while ensuring that evidence relevant to one defendant does not prejudice the other defendant’s case. Lawyers said the defendants may testify against each other, and in such an instance one jury would be removed from the courtroom.

In addition, Elster will be tried simultaneously for an unrelated attempted robbery that occurred at a private home on Edgehill Drive in Los Angeles 10 days before the gas station robbery. Evidence relating to the attempted robbery will not be heard by the jury for Wilson.

Lawyers said the trial, which will resume Wednesday, could continue for several weeks.