Physician Convicted of Murder and Fraud

A Glendale physician was convicted Thursday of murdering a man as part of an elaborate fraud scheme in which a friend of the doctor’s allegedly tried to fake his own death to collect a $1 million life insurance policy.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury of six men and six women convicted Dr. Richard P. Boggs in its second day of deliberations.

Boggs, 57, showed no visible emotion as the verdicts were read.

The physician was found guilty of one count each of first-degree murder and assault with a stun gun, four counts of filing fraudulent insurance claims and two counts of grand theft. He also was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, insurance fraud and grand theft.

The jurors were not available for comment Thursday because they still must decide the penalty. The panel found Boggs guilty of special circumstance allegations--murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait--that qualify him for a possible death sentence.

The labyrinthine murder and insurance-fraud case went to the jury Wednesday, after a five-week trial and an 11th-hour admission by his lawyer that Boggs was “unquestionably guilty” of conspiring to collect life insurance benefits by falsifying the victim’s identification.

But the object of the scheme was money, not murder, defense attorney Dale Rubin maintained in final arguments, telling jurors that prosecutors had failed to prove that the 1988 death of Ellis Greene, a 32-year-old Burbank accountant, was a homicide.

“What the plan needed was not a murder,” Rubin said. “What it needed was a recently deceased body” somehow obtained from the county morgue.

Prosecutors portrayed Boggs as a greedy scam artist who picked up Greene in a bar, lured him to his Glendale office, subdued him with a stun gun and suffocated him. Then, according to the prosecution’s scenario, the doctor summoned paramedics and identified the dead man as his “patient,” one Melvin Hanson, the apparent victim of a heart attack. A photocopy of Hanson’s birth certificate and two credit cards were found on Greene’s body.

Meanwhile, the real Hanson, a close friend of Boggs, had changed his name to Wolfgang Von Snowden and undergone plastic surgery, while his beneficiary and business partner in the Just Sweats clothing company, John Hawkins, collected on a $1-million insurance policy. Hawkins, 27, a bisexual hustler, remains at large.

Hanson, 48, is awaiting trial on allegations of faking his own death and conspiring to commit murder. He appeared at the trial to prove to jurors he was alive, but refused to testify against his friend.

Many of Boggs’ former patients--some of whom he still provides with consultations from a County Jail phone--say they cannot believe their beloved doctor could be involved in such a plot.

But Boggs’ life has passed through many cycles--from up-and-coming young physician, husband, father, church and community leader to party guy on the prowl in Hollywood’s gay bars.

Boggs himself has maintained his innocence, telling The Times several months after Greene’s death, before he became a suspect, that he knew the man as Hanson.

“I’m just somewhat amazed at the whole thing,” he said. “I frankly would like to know what’s been going on.”

The mistaken identity was discovered when an insurance claims representative asked for a thumbprint of the deceased to close out her case. That was the detail that started the murder investigation. Five months after Boggs called 911, the body was identified as that of Greene, who had been reported missing by his aunt.