Desert Search Turns Up No Sign of Writer of Murder Confession : Crime: Investigators find a remote rock hut described in Neill Matzen’s notes, and people at a truck stop remember him. But did he catch a ride out of state?

Authorities searched a remote desert hut here Wednesday but found no sign of Neill F. Matzen, who police believe wrote letters confessing to the Nov. 24 bludgeoning murder of a Buena Park nurse for a promised $15,000 payment from her husband.

Matzen, a 36-year-old tow-truck driver from Santa Ana, told his wife, Cynthia R. Matzen, in one of the letters that he would kill himself at a rock hut about four miles south of Interstate 10, where the couple spent last New Year’s Eve, authorities said.

A search team consisting of two Buena Park police investigators, two Bureau of Land Management rangers and a Riverside County sheriff’s investigator found the primitive hut but found no traces of Matzen or any other recent visitors.

“Now he could be anywhere,” Riverside County Sheriff’s Investigator John B. Jameson said. “This is a truck stop. He looks like a trucker, . . . and he could have caught a ride to Texas or Oklahoma.”

Nine days after Donna J. Connaty was murdered with a metal pipe, Matzen killed her husband--his friend, Richard P. Connaty--in a shoot-out at a Santa Ana trailer park. Police said Connaty barged in on the Matzens, yelled at Matzen, “You killed my wife!” and opened fire. Matzen was wounded but pursued Connaty outside and fatally shot him in the chest, police said.

Investigators declined to file charges against Matzen in that slaying, saying that Matzen shot Connaty in self-defense. But they arrested him later that day on suspicion of murdering Donna Connaty--only to free him two days later because of insufficient evidence.

Two days after leaving the jail ward at Western Medical Center-Anaheim, where he was recovering from a wound in his left arm suffered in the Connaty gunfight, Matzen wrote letters to police and his wife, saying he would soon be dead, plus a five-page letter to the Orange County Register detailing the violent events of the previous two weeks.

“These are facts known only to me and a dead man, and by the time you get this letter I will also be dead, out in Chiriaco Summit, 30 miles east of Indio,” began the letter, which was received by the newspaper Tuesday and turned over to Buena Park police.

Matzen’s yellow 1979 Triumph TR-7 was found Tuesday in the parking lot of the General Patton Memorial Museum at Chiriaco Summit, where residents reported seeing him over the weekend in a coffee shop.

“He was not suicidal, believe me,” said Kay Allen, a waitress at the Chiriaco Summit Coffee Shop.

Allen said Matzen told her that he had killed his best friend and been wounded himself in a fight over a gun in Phoenix after the two closed a big land deal. He had no money because police had kept his cash as evidence, he told her.

The wife of the curator of the Patton museum down the road, with whom Matzen visited frequently over the weekend, paid for his meals, Allen said.

But Matzen told other customers and waitresses different stories, Allen said, and after a while they didn’t know what to believe. His wounded left arm was swollen and red, so she told him he should go to a hospital.

At one point, Allen said, Matzen asked a California Highway Patrol officer at the cafe how he could use sulfur to treat his wound.

Another waitress, Michelle Staci, said she first saw Matzen eating breakfast about 6 a.m. Monday.

He returned about noon to buy sodas, she said, his bandaged arm in a sling, and that was the last she saw of him.

“He was a friendly guy,” Staci said, adding that Matzen told her that his arm injury had something to do with his car’s mechanical breakdown.

Bob Chiriaco, the owner of the trucker cafe, said Matzen slept in his car over the weekend and sat at the bar in the coffee shop with a man in his 40s who frequents the area with his teen-age son.

Matzen, however, did not drink any alcohol, and he didn’t buy the man any drinks, although he did regale him with stories, waitress Allen said.

“I think he (Matzen) left out of here on a truck,” she said.

While investigators found no recent trace of Matzen on Wednesday, they did find a note in a visitor log in the rock hut left by Neill and Cynthia Matzen on Dec. 31: “We are here to say goodbye to the old year and hello to the new.”

Matzen accused his wife of having an affair with Connaty at the same time that he and his wife were spending their weekends in the desert.

His letter also tells of his own friendship with Connaty--and of Connaty’s wish to have his estranged wife killed.

“I met Richard Connaty on July 28, 1989. We both enjoyed the off-road life,” he wrote. “Then one day he and my wife decided to have an affair together. This lasted approximately 14 months.

“Meanwhile, Rick was dropping hints of doing away with his wife. . . . Then he dropped the bomb. He told me that he was going to refinance his house to do remodeling and, if his problem was solved before December, he would pay me $15,000.”

He went on to explain how Connaty told him when his wife would be alone in the house and left a metal pipe and a change of clothes for him.

On the day of the murder, Matzen wrote, he went to the Connatys’ Buena Park home on the premise that he was fixing a gas leak, then called his wife to pick him up a few hours later and drove to the desert to rendezvous with Richard Connaty and both couples’ children.

Matzen said that on Dec. 2, a week after the murder, he told Connaty that he would not permit him to continue the affair with his wife, which led to the gunfight the next day.

“I told him that he wasn’t gonna have my wife either and that is why he tried to kill me,” Matzen wrote.

Friends of Richard Connaty have disputed Matzen’s version of events. Although they refuse to be named, they say that the Connatys were reconciling their differences and that Richard Connaty could not have helped plot his wife’s murder. They say that Matzen--who was deeply in debt and about to be evicted from the trailer park--killed Donna Connaty because she stood in the way of the Matzens moving in with the Connatys once they were evicted.

A trust fund has been established for the Connatys’ three children, ages 6, 8 and 10. Checks may be made payable to the Benefit of the Connaty Children and sent to Home Savings of America, 7964 Beach Blvd., Buena Park 90620. For information, call (714) 670-6743.

Times correspondent Ted Johnson contributed to this report

Murder Mystery

Authorities searched a remote desert hut in Riverside County for signs of Neill F. Matzen, a Santa Ana man who police believe wrote a suicide letter confessing to the Nov. 24 bludgeoning murder of Donna J. Connaty. Matzen had written his wife, Cynthia, that his body could be found at the hut, but investigators found no evidence that he had been there.

Donna J. Connaty, 34. A nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, she was bludgeoned to death upon returning to her Buena Park home from work Nov. 24, still wearing her nurse’s uniform and stethoscope around her neck. In divorce papers, she said that her husband beat her and abused their three children and that she feared for all of their lives.

Richard P. Connaty, 38. A diesel mechanic for Lucky stores, Connaty was killed in a shoot-out with Matzen on Dec. 3 at the Coach oyal Mobile Home Park in Santa Ana. He was a former reserve officer with the Montebello Police Department. He and Donna Connaty were married for 14 years, and he was having an affair with Cynthia Matzen, according to Neill Matzen.

Neill F. Matzen, 36. A tow-truck driver for Country City Tow in Westminster, Matzen wrote letters confessing to the murder of Donna Connaty and saying he would kill himself near Chiriaco Summit. But he has not been found, dead or alive.

Cynthia R. Matzen, 28. A nursing student, she told police that she drove her husband to the Connaty home Nov. 24 to do some work inside the house. She picked him up a few hours later. She told investigators later that she had overheard her husband and Richard Connaty talking about killing Donna Connaty but that she thought that they were joking.