Not-Guilty Plea Is Entered in Actress Killing

A Los Angeles Municipal Court judge entered a not-guilty plea Wednesday on behalf of Robert Bardo, the teen-ager accused of killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer, then set a preliminary hearing date of Oct. 24 in the murder case.

The unusual action by Judge David M. Horwitz came after Bardo’s public defender refused to enter a plea in protest of his client’s controversial extradition from an Arizona jail last month. Los Angeles Deputy Public Defender Stephen Galindo charged that Bardo was returned to Los Angeles in what he described as a questionable extradition.

Horwitz also denied a defense motion to have the murder charges dismissed against Bardo on grounds that the county court lacks proper jurisdiction in the case.

Complaint Amended

At the same time, Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark filed an amended felony complaint against Bardo alleging special circumstances--”lying in wait”--a first step toward seeking a death penalty in the case.

Described by police as an obsessed fan, Bardo is charged with stalking and then gunning down Schaeffer, the 21-year-old star of the television situation comedy “My Sister Sam” at her Fairfax District apartment on July 18.

The suspect was arrested and jailed in Tucson a day later. Police there said he in was a disoriented state, “playing tag” with cars on a freeway. Bardo was held in the Pima County Jail on $1-million bail, under suicide watch in a mental health unit.

But in mid-August, two Los Angeles police officers brought Bardo back to California against his will, a move that ignited an interstate legal controversy, with Bardo’s Tucson defense lawyer charging that he had been spirited illegally out of Arizona.

‘Momentary Lapse’

After Bardo’s return, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner boasted at a press conference that the LAPD officers, with his approval, had indeed “snatched” Bardo from the Pima County Jail. But Reiner contended that the deed was entirely legal--and made possible by “a momentary lapse” on the part of Pima County Assistant Public Defender Lori Lefferts--a charge Lefferts has vehemently denied.

Reiner contended that Lefferts had gone to the wrong court in Tucson to fight Bardo’s extradition and then failed to go to the proper court to refile the papers. Pima County prosecutors later confirmed Reiner’s account. That mistake, said Reiner and the Pima County officials, allowed Bardo to be returned immediately to Los Angeles.

In court Wednesday, Galindo argued unsuccessfully for a full hearing into the circumstances of Bardo’s return to California, saying that new facts are surfacing “almost on a daily basis.”

But Clark said that the circumstances of Bardo’s extradition were “water under the bridge.” She added: “It just doesn’t matter. . . . The defendant is here now . . . and none the worse for wear.”

Horwitz found “no violation of the defendant’s due process.”

Singer Also in Court

In a similar case heard Wednesday in another Los Angeles courtroom, teen-age pop singer Tiffany asked a Superior Court commissioner to order a Santa Cruz man to stay at least 200 yards away from her.

In a petition, the singer claimed that Jeff Deane Turner, 35, had threatened her with physical or emotional harm and had shown up at her aunt’s Costa Mesa home in hopes of seeing the singer.

Turner was arrested in June, 1988, after he tried to present Tiffany--who was then in court for a guardianship case--a bouquet and a sword.

Tiffany also charged that Turner had appeared at one of her Northern California promotional events and “kissed me and walked with his arm around me.” She also said in the petition that Turner had sent her numerous letters, having obtained her home address fraudulently from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.