Slaying Victim Was Figure in Sheriff’s Drug Scandal : Crime: He was defendant whose charges were dismissed. Officials say there is no apparent link between his death and corruption probe.

A Culver City man found shot to death last month in an apparent drug-related slaying was among the defendants whose narcotics charges have been dismissed in the wake of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department money-skimming scandal.

But officials stressed Friday that there is no apparent link between the death of James Henry Atkinson, 43, and the ongoing corruption probe that has led to the indictment of 10 sheriff’s deputies and the dismissal of more than a dozen state and federal drug cases.

The narcotics case involving Atkinson, however, remains a target of federal investigators who are looking into whether sheriff’s narcotics deputies stole money in confiscating nearly $1.95 million during a 1988 drug raid, sources close to the investigation said.

Atkinson, whose body was found April 24 in a Van Nuys alley, died of multiple gunshot wounds and may have been the victim of a soured drug deal, said Los Angeles Police Department Detective Leroy Orozco.

“We believe it’s a drug-related case,” Orozco said. “This is being investigated as a narcotic-related homicide.”

Atkinson died two months after the district attorney’s office had dismissed a cocaine conspiracy charge against him. Atkinson was arrested in May, 1988, after he was implicated in an alleged drug ring that purportedly bought 200 kilograms of cocaine from undercover sheriff’s deputies during a reverse sting.

Three other defendants in the case had already pleaded guilty and were sentenced to six-year prison terms. But prosecutors dropped the case against Atkinson, who had continued on trial, only days after the chief undercover officer in the case--Deputy Macario M. Duran--was indicted by a federal grand jury in the money-skimming scandal.

Duran and nine other sheriff’s narcotics deputies were indicted on Feb. 22 on charges that they stole more than $1.4 million from suspected drug dealers and money launderers. And prosecutors said Friday they could not continue against Atkinson without Duran’s testimony.

In all, 26 narcotics deputies have been suspended in the money-skimming probe. Two others have also been relieved of duty for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.