Resort Slaying of Newport Woman Probed : Mystery: A wounded caretaker called for help from the secluded lodge on the edge of Sequoia National Forest after he and the owner were both shot in the head.

Tulare County sheriff’s deputies are investigating the slaying of a Newport Beach woman who was shot to death at a rustic mountain resort her family owns near the redwood spires and granite peaks of the southern Sierra Nevada.

Lt. Stan Tollison said Wednesday that Bonnie J. Hood, 46, was fatally wounded in the head with a pistol about 3:20 a.m. Sunday in her cabin at Camp Nelson Lodge on the edge of Sequoia National Forest. Her body was found in a bedroom.

Rudy Manuel, 35, the caretaker of the secluded lodge, also was shot in the head during the attack but managed to summon help by calling the telephone operator. He was listed in stable condition Wednesday at Valley Medical Center in Fresno.

“It’s shocked everybody,” said James Hood Jr., the victim’s 16-year-old son. “She loved it up there, and about every other weekend, the whole family would go up. . . . Down here, you know, you can hear the cars at night, but up there it’s just super quiet except for the crickets.”

Hood and her 47-year-old husband James N. Hood, a real estate developer, bought the 43-acre resort in 1987 and reopened the lodge after it had been closed for eight years.

Its restaurant and bar with hand-hewn timbers and wagon-wheel lamps soon became a popular hangout for locals from Camp Nelson, a small mountain community of less than 200 permanent residents 34 miles east of Porterville.

At the time of her death, Hood was coordinating her family’s effort to refurbish the grounds, which include a stone and timber lodge built in 1926, a store built in 1903, a 10-room motel constructed in 1961 and a dozen log cabins from the 1940s. Hood, whose father was an avid trout fisherman, started going to Camp Nelson as a child.

“It was a very special place for us as a family,” her husband said. “My wife has been going there since she was 8. Our family has been going up there for 15 years. . . . All our plans are washed out at this point. Unfortunately, I will probably end up selling the property.”

The elder Hood declined to discuss the circumstances surrounding the shooting or the investigation.

Tollison said a lone intruder apparently tore open a screen and entered Bonnie Hood’s log cabin through a backdoor before confronting both victims. It is unclear whether Manuel was already at Hood’s or had come over from his cabin immediately next door after hearing noise from the attack.

Although investigators had not determined whether anything was missing from the lodge, Tollison said his team of six detectives has not ruled out robbery as a motive for the assault.

So far, no arrests have been made. Tollison said investigators will try to develop a description of the suspect from hospital interviews with Manuel, whose condition is reportedly improving.

Sheriff’s investigators declined to provide details about the assailant or the weapon used, but a report in the Porterville Recorder quoted Manuel as saying the intruder was “a biker-looking man” armed with a snub-nosed, .38-caliber revolver.

James Hood Jr. said Wednesday that his mother had been threatened recently and that there were long-standing disagreements with a few local residents about her plans for the lodge, such as price increases and plans for hiking trails and a honeymoon cottage.

He also said some of the resort’s more rowdy patrons became angry with the family when Bonnie Hood threw them out for knocking over tables and dancing on the bar. The ejections, he said, prompted a boycott by the disgruntled revelers and their friends.

A few weeks ago, a piece of paper was pinned on the cracked windshield of his mother’s car, he said. He quoted the note as saying, “Next time it will be your head.”

“She reported the threats to the police,” the younger Hood said. “I don’t know if she knew who the person was, but she was fearful the whole time after that.”

Investigators said they were not aware of any serious threats to Hood and had no indication that she was in trouble before the shooting. Tollison acknowledged the disagreements about the lodge with local residents, but he said they “were nothing that would have warranted something like this.”

Private services are scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday at the Pacific View Memorial Park Chapel, 3500 Pacific View Drive in Newport Beach, and on Sunday in Camp Nelson. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the volunteer ambulance service in Camp Nelson or the American Cancer Society. In addition to her husband and son and husband, Hood is survived by her 13-year-old daughter Mindy.