Israel Tries 2 Men in Killings of Montecito Couple : Crime: Santa Barbara detectives enlist the aid of Israeli police to build case. It is the first time that that nation has put its citizens on trial for a crime in U.S.

The couple was shot to death in their sleep at their estate in Montecito. The two leading suspects and a key witness had moved to Israel. The investigators and all the files in the case were in Santa Barbara.

Sheriff’s detectives had spent almost two years trying to determine who killed Jack and Carmen Hively, and now the biggest stumbling block in the case was geography.

While lawyers and diplomats from the two countries wrangled about the legality of conducting interviews in Israel, local sheriff’s investigators and detectives from the Israeli National Police began discussing the case by phone. The Israeli police eventually became so intrigued by the killings that they bypassed bureaucratic channels and obtained permission for Santa Barbara investigators to come to Israel.

And in a highly unusual arrangement, detectives from both countries worked together in Israel during the next few months to build a case against the two suspects. Their joint investigation was so successful that the suspects were arrested and are now on trial in Tel Aviv for the killings.

The case marks the first time Israeli citizens have stood trial in Israel for crimes committed in the United States. Israeli law forbids extradition of Israeli citizens for trial elsewhere.

“If we’d left this to the bureaucrats, these two guys wouldn’t be on trial right now,” said Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Detective Edward Skehan, lead investigator on the case. “We basically had our cops talking with their cops . . . and we got things done.”

Skehan recently left for Israel, for the fourth time, to aid Israeli prosecutors. And Santa Barbara Dist. Atty. Thomas Sneddon, who helped the Israelis build the case against the two suspects, also is in Israel, as a trial consultant to the Tel Aviv district attorney.

The Israelis, Tel Aviv prosecutors claim, were hired to kill the Montecito couple by Carmen Hively’s son-in-law so that he and his wife, Hively’s daughter, would inherit a large portion of the multimillion-dollar estate. The couple fled to Canada after the Israelis were arrested, but Santa Barbara prosecutors hope that the current trial will reveal enough information to connect them to the killings so they can eventually be tried in the United States. No charges have been filed against them.

Because Israel does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, it is critical that it tries citizens when it is proved that they have committed crimes in other countries, said Santa Barbara Assistant Dist. Atty. Patrick McKinley.

“Israel doesn’t want the reputation of a country that’s a haven for criminals,” McKinley said. “If a country doesn’t allow extradition, then they’re going to have to be willing put their citizens on trial.”

Santa Barbara investigators initially were concerned that Israeli police would not cooperate because they might feel protective of their own citizens. But a double murder will pique the interest of any police officer, whether he is from Tel Aviv or Santa Barbara. So Israeli police enthusiastically pursued the case, Skehan said. They authorized wire taps early on; they committed a number of detectives to the investigation; they spent countless hours learning about the case from Santa Barbara investigators.

But the legal wrangling continued as judicial authorities from both countries debated whether there was enough evidence to arrest the suspects and then whether there was enough evidence to try them. During this time the police from the two countries ignored the bureaucratic dispute. They simply worked together night and day-- sharing investigative techniques, interviewing suspects together, analyzing wiretaps--until the case they had built was so compelling that authorities had to arrest the two suspects and bring them to trial.

Jack and Carmen Hively lived on a $1.2-million estate in the foothills of Montecito with a sweeping view of the mountains and the ocean. Carmen, 67, provided the money for their lavish lifestyle--she was the wealthy widow of a businessman who once owned Yankee Stadium and the Kansas City baseball franchise, now the Oakland Athletics. Jack, 11 years her junior, a handsome pharmaceutical salesman who retired a few years after their marriage, was her fourth husband.

When they were shot to death with a .22-caliber pistol in October, 1987, sheriff’s detectives immediately discounted robbery as a motive because neither Carmen’s jewelry nor large amounts of cash were taken. Detectives soon began investigating a number of potential suspects. But as the investigation dragged on, and one person after another was cleared, detectives continued to suspect one man-- Charles LeGros, Carmen Hively’s son-in-law.

For years he and his wife, Wendy, had “lived beyond their financial means . . . and had declared bankruptcy,” according to an investigator’s report included in search warrant affidavits. “Charles LeGros lacked the financial backing to promote his many projects and proposals and constantly complained of this frustration in the light of his in-laws’ substantial financial resources.”

But after the LeGroses, who lived in Monterey, inherited more than $1 million from Carmen Hively, they immediately bought a large home in Carmel, a boat and toured Europe for several months, flying first class and staying in luxury hotels, court records show.

A business deal between LeGros and Jack Hively, right before the killings, also interested detectives. Court records indicate that LeGros and a friend, Yair Orr, a former captain in the Israeli Army, asked Jack Hively to invest $500,000 in several schemes including a plan to sell arms from Israel to China. But Carmen, who controlled the finances, was opposed to the investment.

When it became clear to LeGros and Orr that they would not be able to get any money from the Hivelys, investigators theorized, the two men and an Israeli friend of Orr’s conspired to kill the couple.

Investigators could not tie the LeGroses to the case at first because it was confirmed that they they were in Chicago on the night of the killings. Orr, 30, and the other suspect, Nadav Nakan, 33, both combat veterans of the Israeli army, claimed that they were in Maryland at the time with a former army buddy of theirs and his girlfriend.

The couple confirmed the alibi but failed lie detector tests, a source close to the case said. Detectives felt the girlfriend was the “weak link,” and most likely to eventually tell the truth, the source said, because she was not friends with Orr and seemed “very uneasy” with her testimony. But she moved back to Israel and investigators were prohibited by international law from simply flying over and interviewing her.

While they were waiting for permission from judicial authorities, they received a break in the case. Orr’s jilted girlfriend, Joyce Scampa, stepped forward.

When Orr left California about a year after the killings, he “led Scampa to believe that he would be returning at some time in the future and left numerous articles of his clothing behind,” according to court records. But when she discovered that Orr had moved back to Israel and married another woman, Scampa, who had previously refused to be interviewed, told investigators her story. On the night of the killings, she admitted, Orr was not in Maryland. She had met him at the Monterey Airport with the $4,000 in $100 bills he had asked for, according to court records.

Santa Barbara investigators had just begun talking with detectives from the Israeli National Police about the case when Scampa broke Orr’s alibi.

“Joyce gave us what we really needed,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. William Baker, who has investigated the case for two years. “Her testimony convinced Israeli police to let us come to Israel.”

Santa Barbara detectives, along with Israeli police, interviewed the Israeli woman who originally told authorities that the two suspects were in Maryland on the night of the killings. She admitted that she had lied to investigators because the suspects had told her they were working with the Mossad--Israel’s highly secret intelligence organization--on a covert mission and needed her help for their cover story.

The August, 1989, interview with the woman was critical because it gave investigators more insight into the case, and it convinced the Israelis to join the investigation.

Although wiretaps are not permitted for murder investigations in the United States, they are legal in Israel. So Israeli police immediately tapped the phones of the two suspects. Santa Barbara investigators returned home and began following leads they had accumulated in Israel.

The two agencies frequently talked by telephone to exchange information and discuss details picked up on the phone taps. And as the case progressed, Baker and Skehan made a number of trips to Israel. At the end of the investigation, they were in Israel for weeks at a time, working out of a crowded, noisy office in a police substation near Tel Aviv. Although the investigators had different interviewing styles and different investigative techniques, they worked very well together, Baker said.

After a few months, the joint investigation uncovered important information. The phone taps revealed incriminating conversations between LeGros and Orr. And the former army buddy of the suspects, who had also provided an alibi for them on the night of the killings, told Santa Barbara investigators that Orr confided in him that he organized the killings.

Prosecutors from the Santa Barbara district attorney’s office had to then persuade Israeli judicial authorities that the suspects should be arrested and tried. Santa Barbara Dist. Atty. Sneddon wrote a 47-page trial brief for the attorney general in Israel, outlining the case. But the attorney general was not convinced.

Sneddon eventually went to Israel and argued the case himself before the attorney general. Finally, as more information was uncovered by the joint investigation, and evidence against the suspects mounted, the attorney general agreed the case should be prosecuted.

Now another joint effort--this time between prosecutors of the two countries--was required. Sneddon had to familiarize himself with Israeli law, including how to try a murder case before three judges instead of a jury. He had more than 5,000 pages of investigative reports translated into Hebrew. He contacted dozens of witnesses and made sure they would be available to testify in Israel.

“The examination of a witness during this trial can drive you crazy,” Sneddon said. “The D.A. asks the question in Hebrew. The translator translates the question into English. The witness answers in English. Then the translator translates the answer into Hebrew. To ask and answer a single question can take 10 minutes.”

In September, Gov. George Deukmejian signed a bill appropriating $74,000 to help defray the costs for Santa Barbara County. But this is only a “drop in the bucket,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. McKinley. Santa Barbara County must pay for the air fare and housing in Israel for the estimated 25 witnesses and the county personnel involved in the investigation and trial, which could last until spring. Although this will cost the county “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” McKinley said, “it has to be done. . . . If we don’t push for prosecution, nobody will.”

When the trial is complete, Santa Barbara prosecutors hope the Israelis will turn state’s evidence and testify against LeGros. The Santa Barbara County Grand Jury is investigating the case and trying to uncover evidence that will show a financial link between LeGros and the two Israelis.