OJAI : Daughter Testifies in Mother’s Slaying

Testimony began Monday in the murder case of a Lake County man accused in the 1986 shooting of a woman whose decomposed body was found in Matilija Canyon near Ojai.

Jeanine Copus testified at a preliminary hearing in Ventura County Municipal Court that Thomas Gottchalk, 49, drove away from the Vagabond Inn in Ventura with her mother, Jean Ellen Eubanks, 34, on July 31, 1986, and returned alone about an hour later.

Copus testified that Gottchalk, an acquaintance of hers and her mother’s, told her that her mother was “running around” with two men who were repairing her car, but she still hadn’t been found two days later after Copus and Gottchalk returned home to Middletown in Lake County.

Karl Fields of Ojai testified that he and several friends found Eubanks’ body Aug. 23 when they hiked into Matilija Canyon to swim and drink beer. Fields said he noticed a smell and pulled four rocks off a makeshift cairn near a road. On seeing Eubanks’ body, he called the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, Fields said.

Copus testified that Gottchalk liked California Coolers. And she testified that as she removed her belongings from Gottchalk’s van on returning to Middletown, she stumbled across two pistols, one too small for her hand and the other much larger and heavier.

Authorities say Gottchalk shot Eubanks twice in the head after promising to show her around Southern California.

Gottchalk disappeared after the slaying but surfaced in 1988 in Utah and pleaded not guilty in Municipal Court in August on a charge of murder with use of a firearm.