Transient Receives $75,000 Settlement Over Arrest

Johnny Massingale Jr., the Kentucky drifter once accused of two brutal murders in San Diego, has reached an out-of-court settlement with the city and county of San Diego and the Kentucky state trooper who obtained a confession from him.

The agreement was entered Monday before U.S. Magistrate Harry R. McCue in San Diego federal court. Massingale will receive a total $75,000 by June 1, said Frank Sullivan, deputy city attorney. The city and county each will pay $30,000 to Massingale, Sullivan said.

The remainder of the money will be paid by the state of Kentucky, said James M. Peterson, the attorney representing the state trooper, Dennis Pace.

Both attorneys said they made the decision to enter into settlement with Massingale for economic reasons. None of the defendants admitted liability as part of the settlement, Sullivan said.

Massingale, an illiterate man from Harlan, Ky., was accused in the 1979 slaying of Suzanne Jacobs, 31, and her 3-year-old son, Colin, at their Normal Heights home.

David Allen Lucas was convicted last June of the Jacobs slayings, as well as the murder of a college student and the attempted murder of another woman. Lucas was sentenced to death last September.

Massingale became a suspect in the Jacobs slayings after an Alabama man told a Texas Ranger that he met a hitchhiker named Johnny who bragged that he had killed a woman and her son near San Diego by nearly cutting their heads off. Investigators eventually found Massingale at his Kentucky home.

San Diego authorities obtained a warrant and flew to Kentucky to question him.

Sullivan said Massingale confessed to Dennis Pace, the state trooper, as Pace was returning him to a jail cell.

Massingale was arrested on March 14, 1984, and was held until the charges against him were dropped on Jan. 5, 1985, when authorities concluded that evidence found at the scene tended to exculpate him.

Massingale testified at Lucas’ trial that he was coerced into confessing by Pace. Massingale said he was told to admit his guilt and to throw himself at the mercy of the court.

Massingale filed suit against the city and county of San Diego and Dennis Pace in November, 1985, alleging that he had been deprived of his constitutional rights, primarily because he had been forced to confess and was denied his right to counsel during his questioning, Sullivan said.

Had Massingale won the case, the defendants would have had to pay Massingale’s attorney’s fees--an amount that could have been prohibitive, Sullivan said.

“Even if the jury would have awarded $1,000, we would have had to pay something like $200,000 in costs and attorney fees,” Sullivan said. “It was a business decision to settle the thing.”

James Tetley, Massingale’s San Diego attorney, said his client agreed to the settlement because the case had already taken so much time in the courts. “He told me he wanted to settle ‘now,’ ” Tetley said.

Tetley said Massingale will receive about $30,000 from the settlement. He said Massingale’s attorneys have already spent about $19,000 of their own money to obtain such things as depositions and copies of Lucas’ preliminary and pretrial hearings, which were necessary in preparing the civil lawsuit.