Confessions in Letters Point to Conspiracy in 2 Slayings : Crime: A released suspect says he was hired to kill a Buena Park nurse by her husband.

A Santa Ana man sent a suicide note to police and a letter to a local newspaper confessing to the bludgeoning murder of Buena Park nurse Donna Connaty and implicating her husband in the crime, police said.

Buena Park police received the note Tuesday morning from Neill F. Matzen, who was arrested last week on suspicion of murdering Connaty but freed two days later because of insufficient evidence.

Matzen, a 36-year-old tow truck operator, said in the note that he would be dead by the time police received it and that he had sent a full confession over Connaty’s murder to the newspaper.

The five-page letter was turned over to Buena Park police. In it, Matzen described how he and Richard P. Connaty, whom Matzen subsequently killed Dec. 4 in a shoot-out, plotted and carried out the slaying of Donna Connaty and tried to disguise it as a burglary, Buena Park Police Sgt. Terry Branum said.

“These are facts known only to me and a dead man, and by the time you get this letter I will also be dead,” Matzen began his letter, which was dated Friday, 11:57 a.m.

The letters appear to be authentic, Branum said, but investigators plan to examine them for fingerprints and compare them to handwriting samples.

Meanwhile, Riverside County officials searched for Matzen after his car, a yellow Triumph TR-7, was found abandoned about 30 miles east of Indio. Matzen said in his letter to the Orange County Register that his car could be found there.

“We’re attempting to locate Neill Matzen,” Branum said. “We’re also in the process of obtaining an arrest warrant for him based on this new evidence.”

The letters appear to shed new light on both the Nov. 24 slaying of Donna Connaty and Matzen’s shooting of Richard Connaty nine days later. Police declined to release the letter but agreed to read parts of it to a reporter.

The Dec. 4 shoot-out began after Connaty walked into Matzen’s mobile home, screamed, “You killed my wife!” and opened fire, wounding Matzen in the shoulder.

Matzen then followed Connaty outside and fatally shot him in the chest. Investigators said that slaying appeared to be a case of self-defense.

Although no charges were filed against Matzen in Connaty’s slaying, he was arrested later that day in the slaying of Donna Connaty.

She had been found Nov. 25 in her home, bludgeoned to death. After Matzen’s arrest, statements from his wife, Cynthia Matzen, led police to a metal pipe under the Connatys’ home that they believe was the weapon used to kill her.

In his letter to the Register, Matzen said Connaty had agreed to pay him $15,000 to murder his wife, Branum said. The Connatys had been separated for most of the previous 18 months, and Donna Connaty had described her husband in court papers as an abusive, violent man toward both her and their three children.

Matzen said in the letter that Connaty had planned to refinance his house to pay him his fee for murdering Donna Connaty, Branum said.

Connaty “also explained to him that she would be staying alone that weekend, the 24th” of November, said Branum, summarizing the letter.

“He had left the . . . pipe as a murder weapon,” Branum said, “and he told him how to dispose of it by putting it under the house.”

Matzen also wrote that the murder plot called for him to “make the place a little mess to look like a berglary (sic).” Connaty left a change of clothes for him at the house. If he was confronted there, he was to say he was fixing a gas leak, Branum said Matzen wrote in the letter.

Cynthia Matzen overheard the conversation when her husband and Connaty were discussing the details of the murder, Matzen wrote.

Connaty had gone to the desert near Barstow with his three children and Matzen’s daughter the day before his wife was murdered. Neill and Cynthia Matzen met them there Saturday afternoon, several hours after Donna Connaty was murdered, police said.

On Saturday, investigators took the Connaty children--ages 6, 8 and 10--back to the desert, where they spent the weekend of Nov. 24. The children led investigators to a campsite where Matzen allegedly discarded clothing he wore the day of the murder.

Police recovered a pair of tennis shoes that they believe belonged to Matzen and sent them to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department crime laboratory for analysis, Branum said.

“Cynthia (Matzen) had given information that he had disposed of the clothes, and the kids directed them to the right campsite,” Branum said.

Matzen did not specifically explain in the letter why Connaty tried to kill him after he had carried out his part of the plot, Branum said.

But the letter did discuss an affair between Connaty and Matzen’s wife that was going on at the time, Branum said.

He declined to elaborate, saying that police would not comment on “moral issues.”

Cynthia Matzen told police that she received a phone call from her husband Thursday, the day after he was released from the jail ward of Western Medical Center-Anaheim. She told police that her husband had said she should watch her mail, Branum said.

On Monday, she received a short letter similar to the one police received, in which Matzen said he would soon be dead. “Her letter spelled out the fact that there was some property to be disposed of,” Branum said.

She called police Tuesday morning, he said.

Matzen insisted that his wife--whose statements to police broke the case open and who admitted driving him to the murder scene that morning--had not been involved in the murder plot.

“My wife didn’t have anything to do with any of the events of this letter,” Matzen wrote. “This contains only the truth and facts and is open for full print so that the truth will finally be known.”

When Connaty’s father, Ramsey, was told that his son had been implicated by Matzen in a murder plot, the father said: “Rick is not around to defend himself. . . . He (Matzen) can say whatever he wants.”

A service for Rick Connaty is scheduled at noon Saturday at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress.

Times staff writers James Gomez and Matt Lait contributed to this report.