Victim’s Drug Use Pushed Father to Kill Her, Friends Say

Rifka Cason had often told her friends that her father wanted her dead.

A cocaine addict who friends say stole from and abused her elderly father, Rifka Cason commented that her father was growing weary of the mistreatment. To protect himself, they said, he had recently purchased a rifle.

“She came up and told me last week, ‘Daddy just bought a gun,’ ” said Fred Wells, a friend of the family. “I said, ‘Why? Too much traffic coming in the house?’ She said, ‘No, for me. He said he’s going to kill me. He’s tired of me.’ ”

Tuesday morning, police said, 72-year-old Leonard Cason fatally shot his 29-year-old daughter in the head with a .30-caliber Winchester rifle as she slept in the dining room of the home the two shared in the 200 block of West 54th Street.

‘Fell by the Wayside’

According to friends, Cason was unable to cope with seeing his daughter--whom friends describe as a “warmhearted girl who fell by the wayside”--sink into a life of theft and prostitution, with drugs hastening her descent.

When Cason was arrested, said homicide detectives, he told investigators that his daughter “was already dead in the eyes of the Lord,” and that he had shot her “just to put her out of her misery.”

On Thursday, he entered a plea of not guilty to a murder charge in Los Angeles Municipal Court. He is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

It was the second time in as many months that a Los Angeles County parent was arrested for allegedly resorting to violence to deal with a child’s drug use. On Aug. 30, a Lancaster housewife was accused of shooting and killing a man she accused of giving drugs to her teen-age daughter. The woman has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Although violence is not unusual in families beset by drug addiction, Los Angeles-area drug counselors concede that, as the drug epidemic in the United States worsens, the pressure on parents to take tougher action against drug-addicted children is mounting.

“There is more pressure put on the parents,” said Mary Montgomery, who works with the Do It Now Foundation, a drug counseling and education clinic in Hollywood. “The personality of the individual determines how they will act. Some get more passive; some get more violent.”

An inability to cope with a child’s drug addiction can lead to rage, said Grace Murphy, the director of LifeStarts rehabilitation program in Inglewood.

“They become angry, and do things they otherwise might not,” she said. “That puts them at risk.”

Leonard Cason was described by a longtime friend as a devout Christian persecuted by a wayward daughter.

“I’ve known him since 1954, and I know he’s a good man,” said one of three tenants to whom Cason rented out rooms in the clapboard home. The man declined to give his name.

“His daughter was ornery, always messing with him . . . always mistreating him and disrespecting him.”

Cason, a diabetic who had lived with his daughter for about three years, told authorities that Rifka stole between $3,000 and $4,000 from him to support her habit, taking even the money he received from Social Security.

“I’m not surprised” at the shooting, said Wells, the family friend. “A man can only take so much--even from his daughter.”

But Rifka’s half-brother, 22-year-old Marcus Hunter, lamented that his half-sister’s chances at rehabilitation were cut short by the gun blast.

“No one had a right to kill her,” he said. “I know she had problems, but how was she going to get herself together if she was not alive? That was wrong. She didn’t deserve to die.”

‘Tried to Get Help’

Hunter, who is not Leonard Cason’s son, said Rifka talked of righting her drug-scarred life and even briefly admitted herself to a drug rehabilitation center.

“She tried to get (professional) help, but it didn’t work,” he said. “But I saw signs that she was trying to improve her situation.”

He said their mother, Rifka Chapman, often tried to counsel his half-sister and tried to maintain a close relationship with her.

Chapman and Leonard Cason separated years ago, Hunter said, “but they still stayed in touch.”

The courts gave Chapman custody of Rifka Cason’s 3-year-old daughter, Rifka Zorine Lewis, shortly after she was born.

A preschooler, the child lives with Chapman and Hunter in their South Los Angeles home, a few miles from the Christian relief program Chapman runs.

Rifka Cason had moved in with her father in 1986, after he made her part-owner of their home.

Cason already had been renting the house to boarders to help pay bills, so he and Rifka slept in the dining room. The boarders took the bedrooms.

Hunter said his half-sister would keep house and work odd jobs to help with expenses. But not long after she moved in with Leonard Cason, he and others said, Rifka fell prey to the crack pushers who invaded the working-class neighborhood.

From there, her relationship with her father apparently deteriorated. Once, police said, Leonard Cason nailed the back door shut to keep his daughter out.

People close to the family said he often threatened to kill his daughter.

“He would call and say it all the time,” Hunter said. “He was always talking about killing her.”

And on Tuesday, police said, he did.

Times staff writers Andrea Ford and Franki Ransom contributed to this story.