Nurse Guilty in Roommate’s Murder for Insurance Money

A 42-year-old nurse faces the death penalty after being convicted Friday of hiring a co-worker to murder her roommate and mutilate his body in a scheme to collect on a $100,000 mortgage insurance policy.

A Van Nuys Superior Court jury deliberated for five days before finding Maureen McDermott guilty of first-degree murder in the April 28, 1985, death of Stephen Eldridge. The jury also convicted McDermott of attempted murder in a failed effort to kill him on March 21, 1985.

McDermott flinched and put her hand to her forehead as the verdict was announced.

McDermott, who works at County-USC Medical Center, faces the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole because the jury found that she was guilty of the special circumstances allegations--lying in wait and killing for financial gain. Judge Alan B. Haber ordered jurors to return on March 19 for the penalty phase of the trial.

Eldridge, 27, was stabbed 44 times and his penis was cut off. His body was discovered in the Van Nuys home he shared with McDermott after she called the 911 emergency line to report that three intruders had knocked her unconscious as she took a bath, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Mader.

Investigators grew suspicious of McDermott because her injuries were minor, expensive items in plain view in the house had been left untouched and the bath water was still tepid hours after she said she had been attacked, Mader said.

In addition, they discovered that Eldridge had been injured in a knife attack by two intruders in the house barely a month earlier.

Mader contended that McDermott set up the killing and faked her own injuries so she could collect on a mortgage insurance policy that she and Eldridge took out when they became co-owners of a house on Killion Street in Van Nuys.

McDermott hired James Flores Luna, a hospital orderly, to kill Eldridge and mutilate his body in hopes of making it look like a homosexual crime of passion, which she thought would be less likely to be thoroughly investigated by police, Mader said.

Luna, 36, was the key witness in the trial, which began in October. Also testifying against McDermott were Marvyn and Dondell Lee, brothers from Los Angeles who helped with the killing, according to prosecutors. The two received immunity in exchange for testifying.

Luna pleaded guilty to murder with special circumstances after being promised that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty against him if he cooperated. His sentencing is pending.

McDermott’s two court-appointed attorneys, Joe Ingber and Carl Burkow, told the jury that police did a shoddy investigation, and they attacked the credibility of Luna and the Lee brothers.

Prosecutors alleged that after the March 21 attempt on Eldridge’s life--which McDermott herself arranged--McDermott comforted him while secretly plotting to kill him.

Eldridge confided to a friend that he felt far more secure when McDermott was home with him, Mader said.