Nurse Faces Trial in Roommate’s Slaying in Alleged Insurance Scheme

Called to a house on a quiet Van Nuys street nearly 4 1/2 years ago, police and paramedics saw the aftermath of an unusually brutal crime. Stephen Eldridge, a 27-year-old self-employed landscape architect, had been stabbed 44 times. His body lay mutilated and bleeding in his bedroom.

Police and paramedics were struck almost immediately by several peculiarities about the death.

Eldridge’s roommate, Maureen McDermott, had been in the house during the murder--Eldridge’s body was found, in fact, after McDermott called the 911 emergency line to report that three robbers had knocked her unconscious as she took a bath while at home alone.

But although it might be assumed that vicious killers would not want to leave witnesses, authorities said, McDermott had herself received injuries so mild that they didn’t even require a Band-Aid. Jewelry and expensive items in plain view had been left untouched.

Then there was the temperature of the bathwater, still tepid hours after McDermott said she had been attacked. Odder still, one of the paramedics had been called to the same house barely a month earlier to treat Eldridge for a bizarre knife attack by two intruders, according to authorities.

Now, three years later, McDermott, a registered nurse at County-USC Medical Center held in high esteem by her bosses and co-workers, is about to go on trial in Van Nuys Superior Court for murder and attempted murder in Eldridge’s April 28, 1985, death and a March 21, 1985, attack on him.

An attractive 42-year-old woman, McDermott is accused of masterminding a scheme to kill Eldridge so she could collect on a $100,000 mortgage insurance policy that the two took out when they became co-owners of a home on Killion Street in Van Nuys.

Prosecutors contend in court files that McDermott hired James Flores Luna, a hospital orderly with whom she worked, to kill Eldridge, ordering him to cut off Eldridge’s penis in hopes that authorities would attribute the death to a homosexual quarrel. Prosecutors contend that McDermott had Luna tie her up and inflict slight injuries so she would not be a suspect.

Luna, 36, of La Puente is expected to be the key prosecution witness in McDermott’s capital murder trial, which is scheduled to begin the middle of this week and is expected to last through January.

Because prosecutors are alleging two special circumstance allegations--that McDermott killed Eldridge for financial gain and that she lay in wait to carry out the killing--she faces the death penalty if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Luna pleaded guilty in August to a charge of murder with special circumstances after being promised that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty against him if he testified.

Also expected to testify against McDermott are Marvyn and Dondell Lee, brothers from Los Angeles who prosecutors say helped in the killing. The two have been promised immunity in exchange for testifying against McDermott.

Joe Ingber, one of McDermott’s two court-appointed attorneys, said the charges will be proved false.

Far from being a killer, McDermott spent “most of her life engaged in the process of helping human beings” and, if anything, was too naive and kind-hearted for her own good, the attorney said.

“Miki,” as her friends called her, met Eldridge at a gay bar they both frequented near her home. When Eldridge said he needed a place to stay, McDermott kindly gave him a half-interest in her home in exchange for $10,000 and the promise of some remodeling work, Ingber said in an interview.

McDermott was a dedicated and hard-working nurse whose employee evaluations over the years showed her work to be not just good but outstanding, Ingber said, a point not disputed by prosecutors. Her superiors and co-workers “were all shocked by her being charged. Many will testify on her behalf,” he added.

But prosecutors paint a picture of McDermott as a woman leading two distinctly different lives.

“There were a number of people who would say she was the most caring, compassionate, warm person on the face of the earth and another group who thought of her as extremely manipulative, greedy and evil,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathryne Mader, the prosecutor in the case.

In court files, prosecutors allege that McDermott let Eldridge move in not out of kindness but because she was in debt and wanted somebody to pay half the mortgage.

The mortgage insurance was purchased by Eldridge and McDermott in December, 1984, with first right of ownership of the house and $100,000 going to the survivor if either died. Soon after, McDermott set about arranging Eldridge’s death, prosecutors contend.

According to testimony from McDermott’s January, 1987, preliminary hearing, Eldridge told Los Angeles police that he was attacked in the home by two men who banged on his door and told him that someone was trying to steal his truck.

Eldridge told police that one of the men, later identified as Luna, ordered him to drop his shorts and crawl into a bedroom. There, the man clubbed him on the head and used a knife to make many small slashes in his back and buttocks, the police officer quoted Eldridge as saying.

Eldridge said he escaped by pushing the men aside and yelling as he ran out the front door, the officer testified. McDermott, who prosecutors contend planned the attack, showed up while paramedics were preparing to take Eldridge to the hospital, the officer testified.

Mader portrayed McDermott as a woman so cold-blooded that she cared for and comforted Eldridge after the March 21 attack, while secretly plotting the second attempt on his life.

“McDermott was nursing Steve and dressing Steve’s wounds and then going to the pay phone and calling the killer and saying, ‘Come back--and do it again right next time,’ ” Mader said.

Ironically, the frightened Eldridge confided to a friend that he felt most secure when McDermott was home with him, Mader added.

Fire Department paramedic Steve Brunett testified at the preliminary hearing that he and his partner answered McDermott’s call for help at the same house shortly before midnight on April 28, 1985.

McDermott told Brunett that she had been taking a bath and had answered the door to find two men who asked her for money, the paramedic testified. When she said she didn’t have any, they beat her into unconsciousness and left her with her hands tied, he quoted her as saying.

Aside from slight cuts on the cheek, breast and thigh and bruises around her left eye, McDermott seemed unharmed and needed no treatment, Brunett testified, so the two paramedics got ready to leave.

Then, in what prosecutors contend was a panicked attempt to make sure that the paramedics discovered Eldridge’s body, McDermott said she needed to go to the bathroom to vomit.

En route, she pointed to some blood in the hallway, prosecutors said. “That must be from one of the cats,” Brunett quoted McDermott as saying. Brunett said he followed the trail of blood to Eldridge’s body.

Prosecutors contend that Luna inflicted McDermott’s injuries at her request so she would appear to have been assaulted.

McDermott was arrested in May, 1985, and released without being charged, then rearrested in August, 1985, at her mother’s home in Philadelphia after a lengthy police investigation.