OJAI : Judge Removes Self From Fraud Trial

A Superior Court judge removed himself Friday from the case of a man who has claimed to be the hemophiliac son of an Air Force colonel wounded in the Panama invasion and who is charged with 12 counts of fraud.

Judge Lawrence Storch said he was removing himself from the trial of David Michael Murray--who asked Friday to be addressed as Shi Stone--”out of an abundance of caution.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles R. Roberts said Murray requested the judge’s removal after a May 25 hearing at which Roberts and William C. Maxwell, Murray’s attorney, approached Storch at the bench for a conference.

Roberts said Murray believed that he heard the judge say the word “jerk.” Storch declined Friday to discuss the case because it is pending.

Storch ordered Murray to be tried in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Kenneth R. Yegan.

A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.

Authorities contend that Murray is a 31-year-old con artist with 11 aliases and criminal records in six states. In Ventura County, authorities said, Murray convinced many Ojai residents that he was a 17-year-old high school student named Shi Stone.

Among the counts, Murray is charged with defrauding Ken and Dorothy Johnson, an Ojai couple, of room and board expenses. He also is accused of bilking an Ojai pharmacist out of $1,600 worth of a blood coagulant to treat his hemophilia.

Murray is being held in Ventura County Jail on the fraud charges and on two parole violation charges, including one stemming from a 1980 auto theft conviction in Ventura.