Slain Man Frequently Visited Site of Occultists

Ronald Steven Baker, the UCLA student whose slaying is being investigated as possibly related to his study of the occult, had often gone to the Chatsworth railroad tunnel where he was found stabbed to death last month, his parents said Friday.

While in high school, Baker, 21, and his friends often explored the tunnel, which runs through the rocky hills above Chatsworth Park. And Baker had told his parents last spring that he continued to go there occasionally.

Los Angeles police said the tunnel has for years been favored by local teen-agers, but recently had also been the scene of occult activities. Pentagrams are painted on its walls, and police have received reports of ritualistic animal killings there.

Baker, who was described by family and friends as inquisitive about religions, was involved with the Methodist Church but was also taking classes in Wicca, an occult witchcraft that experts say follows a nonviolent philosophy of worshiping nature. Police believe that he may have gone to the park to meditate. He was found with his throat cut and repeatedly stabbed at the entrance of the tunnel on June 22--the morning after the summer solstice, a holy day among followers of the occult.

“He and his friends had gone into that tunnel before,” said Gaylon Baker, the victim’s father, who works as a technical writer. “It would not have been unusual for him to go there. He may have gone there alone. But who knows what happened after he got there?

“I feel that someone he didn’t know accosted him and attacked him.”

Police remain unsure what happened to Baker, who grew up in Woodland Hills but had lived this year in an apartment in Van Nuys.

Though the victim was studying a benevolent area of the occult, detectives are investigating the possibility that Baker may have begun exploring a violent segment of the occult or had gone to the park and stumbled on a group involved in violence.

Baker’s wallet was taken by his killer, and police have not ruled out robbery as a motive. But detectives have discounted two ransom calls placed to his parents as a ruse by the killer.

“My opinion is that they weren’t legitimate,” Detective Frank Garcia said of the calls Gaylon Baker received near midnight June 21 and the next morning. “It’s a red herring designed to steer us away from the true motive, whatever that may be.”

Gaylon Baker said the calls appeared to be tape-recorded demands for $100,000 to be delivered at 5 p.m. on June 22. But the caller never said where or how the delivery was to be made, leading police to conclude that they were bogus.

“It was a very strange, raspy voice,” Baker said. “It sounded like a recording. A man said, ‘Mr. Baker, we have your son. . . . Do not go to the police or he will die. You better do what we say.’ I thought it was somebody pulling a prank.”

Baker attempted to call his son at his apartment, but he was not home. Still believing that the call was a prank, the father did not call police until 10:30 a.m. the next day when he received a similar call. Police set up equipment to trace another call, but no other calls were placed to the Baker home.

“They seemed real,” said the victim’s mother, Katherine Baker, who works as a secretary at a Methodist church. “But if they were real, it seemed that the caller would have followed through. He didn’t.”

At the same time police were investigating the ransom calls, other detectives were investigating the slaying of an unidentified man found at the railway tunnel at Chatsworth Park. The victim was not identified as Ronald Baker until detectives on the killing learned of the investigation of the possible kidnaping.

The Bakers were unaware of their son’s exploration of the occult. The parents said their son had always been curious about other religions but remained involved in the Methodist Church while he followed his curiosity.

“He was inquisitive and he was always exploring,” his father said. “I don’t think he would have really been into the occult. I think he was just curious about it. He was curious about other religions. He had explored Buddhism before. But he was a Christian. He never stopped his involvement with that.”

The Bakers said they had no conflict with police theories on the case but believe that the motive behind their son’s slaying could be that their son was simply at the wrong place at a bad time.

“Someone found him there at the park,” Gaylon Baker said. “It could have been drug addicts or transients. It could have been anybody.”