Trial in 1983 Murder Focuses on Guard Dog’s Trust of Killer : Mystery: Why didn’t Dante the German shepherd attack whoever shot his master? Was the dog lying down on the job or did he know the gunman?

A German shepherd guard dog named Dante did nothing to stop an intruder who six years ago shot and killed the man the dog had been trained to protect, but what would appear to be a case of canine cowardice has instead become a key piece of evidence in the trial of the alleged killer.

Noel P. Scott, 28, is on trial for the Oct. 16, 1983, murder of his grandfather, 70-year-old Louis Fox, partly because he was one of only a handful of people who could have slipped into the victim’s North Hollywood house without being attacked by Dante, prosecutors said.

Authorities allege that Scott, a struggling actor and musician, shot his grandfather three times in the head with a .30-caliber handgun after a heated argument.

“Noel Scott was possibly closest to the dog next to Lou,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Sidney D. Trapp Jr., the prosecutor in the case. “The grandson was so close to the dog that the dog would jump into the pool when Noel swam in it to keep the kid from drowning.”

The case remained a mystery for five years until a childhood friend of Scott’s implicated him. The friend’s statement supported police contentions that a family member must have committed the slaying because strangers would have been attacked by Dante, who has since died.

Trapp said Scott had befriended the dog while living at the grandfather’s house for two months before the murder. There were no signs of forced entry, suggesting that the killer knew that Fox kept the sliding glass bedroom door open at night so the dog could enter and leave at will, investigators said.

Scott has denied guilt, saying he was at a Hollywood dance club when the killing occurred. Defense attorney Sherwin C. Edelberg will present his case in the next week or two after the prosecution rests.

Scott told police in 1988 that the dog appeared groggy when he came to pick up the animal after the slaying, and he suggested that someone had drugged Dante to get into the house. But witnesses who saw the dog on the day of the killing said it appeared normal.

During cross-examination, Edelberg has questioned the ability of prosecution witnesses to accurately remember the dog’s behavior before and immediately after the murder. He has also challenged their capacity to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior in dogs.

Although Scott was not the only one who was friendly with Dante, other family members and friends were eliminated as suspects for lack of a motive, Trapp said.

Scott, on the other hand, was having trouble finding work as an actor and musician, Trapp said. He thought that by inheriting Fox’s house and stealing $20,000 worth of jewelry belonging to his grandfather that he could prevent a breakup with his girlfriend, Lise Rothchild, who had begun to think of him as a loser, Trapp said.

The dog was so intimidating that visitors to the grandfather’s house had to sit down and let themselves be sniffed by the animal before they could be let in, said Richard D. Eget, Fox’s roommate at the time.

“I would move carefully around the dog,” Eget testified in the San Fernando Superior Court trial. “I wouldn’t want to confront the animal. It was a guard dog. It was a mean animal.”

Eget was the primary suspect immediately following the killing, but he was released after police determined that he had no motive to shoot Fox, who had let him live in the house rent-free. The two had met about a year earlier through an alcohol rehabilitation program.

Dante’s role has been a recurring issue in a trial that has dragged on for more than two months. The trial had to be delayed by an attorney’s illness and a juror’s work emergency, and Christmas vacation pushed back the date of opening statements to mid-January.

The slow pace has prompted Judge Howard J. Schwab to openly express his exasperation, saying at one point that he feared the trial would become “McMartinized.”

Dante’s behavior, though important, is not the only clue that Scott committed the murder, Trapp said.

On Friday, Scott’s boyhood friend told jurors Scott asked him three weeks after the murder to hock a diamond for him, which investigators later determined most likely had come from the grandfather’s missing ring.

The same friend testified in January that Scott asked him three days after the shooting whether he knew how to alter fingerprints and beat a lie-detector test.

Three weeks before the shooting, Scott visited Fox’s Milbank Street house with Rothchild and went through his grandfather’s papers, possibly to look for a will, Trapp said. He also examined the contents of a jewelry box kept atop a dresser in the bedroom, but replaced it when Rothchild said it contained inexpensive costume jewelry, she told authorities.

The box appeared undisturbed after the murder, but the grandfather’s diamond ring and Rolex watch were gone, so the killer, Trapp said, must have known that the box contained cheap jewelry.

Scott’s fingerprints were found on a flashlight from Fox’s nightstand, indicating that he used it to see his target in the dark bedroom, Trapp said. Though the handgun has not been recovered, it is believed to be the same gun that was found missing from the grandfather’s holster after the murder. Three .30-caliber shell casings found on the bedroom floor matched bullets stored in the grandfather’s dresser, he said.

The case is not the only one in which a dog’s behavior has provided crucial clues. But most other such cases have involved tracking dogs who led police to suspects.

Defense attorneys have frequently argued that a dog’s tracking ability is not always reliable and should not be admitted as evidence. But one former prosecutor, discussing a recent dog-tracking case in Washington said, “Dogs don’t lie.”