ANAHEIM : Georgia Slaying Puzzles Investigators

Authorities are searching for a motive in the execution-style killing of an Anaheim accountant shot in the back of the head as he sat at the bar of a restaurant in Savannah, Ga.

Savannah police had initially described the slaying of 52-year-old Jon Berry Bragg as a “professional hit,” but spokesman Mark Keller said Wednesday that investigators have no evidence to support that speculation.

Keller said, however, that police continued to be baffled by the killing.

Monday night, Bragg was paying his tab at a Bennigan’s restaurant when an unknown gunman approached him from the back, firing a single shot behind his left ear. Bragg slumped over the bar as the gunman walked out of the restaurant and escaped in a station wagon, Keller said.

Witnesses have provided descriptions of the gunman and the getaway vehicle, Keller said.

“This (killing) does not fit in any category of the kind of homicides we have in Savannah,” Keller said. “Our homicides are either drug-related or domestic-related. Nothing like this.”

Keller said Bragg retired from the Army about 15 years ago, earned an accounting degree, and later moved to the West Coast. He was divorced but kept in touch with his two children who live in Nashville, Tenn., Keller said.

After he was remarried to a German national, Bragg moved into the Charleston Square Gardens apartment complex near Disneyland about four years ago.

Bragg’s wife, Inge, became ill in 1988 and died in January, 1989. Neighbors and apartment manager Harry Coryell said Bragg became despondent after her death. About two months later, he disappeared.

“He just packed up and left,” Coryell said. “I don’t even know where he went.”

Keller said Bragg had stayed at a Savannah motel for about two months before checking out in mid-March to go on a trip to West Germany.

Checks with the California Department of Motor Vehicles also revealed that Bragg was using his California license in January when he was cited by police in North Carolina for “driving while impaired.”

He left briefly on a trip to West Germany and returned on March 28 with an urn that contained his wife’s ashes, Keller said.

Motel manager Cecil Carruth said Bragg returned to the motel late last month and requested a room with a kitchenette.

” He said he was going to be here for a year and that . . . he wanted to start a little (business) here,” Carruth said. “He was a good, quiet man.”