Man Ordered to Stand Trial in Slaying : Hearing: Despite being identified by an eyewitness, the suspect pleads not guilty in the death of a Newport Beach woman who owned a lodge in Tulare County.

A man who denied killing the Newport Beach woman who owned Camp Nelson Lodge in Tulare County was ordered Thursday to stand trial on a murder charge.

Bruce Edward Beauchamp of Fontana declared his innocence, even though he admitted being in the mountain community the night Bonnie Jean Hood died and even though a witness identified him as the killer.

That witness, Rudy Manuel, 35, was wounded by an assailant who broke into Hood’s cabin the night of Aug. 19. Manuel said that Hood, 46, went to his cabin and asked him to check because she thought something was wrong. Manuel, who was the lodge’s caretaker, said he then went to Hood’s cabin, and Beauchamp burst in and ordered him to kneel on the floor.

Manuel said he refused “because I knew he was going to put the gun to the back of my head and kill me.”

Instead, Manuel lunged at the gun and was shot in the head. He said he pretended to be unconscious and heard two more shots, one of which killed Hood.

Beauchamp, his ankles shackled, testified that he initially went to Camp Nelson on a weekend in August after Hood’s husband, Jim Hood, told him about the resort.

The defendant once worked for a real estate development company partly owned by Jim Hood, Valley Business Center in Newport Beach. During the preliminary hearing, Beauchamp said he recently had been collecting unemployment but also made $400 under the table from Jim Hood and his partner.

Beauchamp, 30, said he returned to the mountain community the evening of Aug. 18 in a futile search for a woman he had met on the previous visit. After drinking, dancing and ingesting methamphetamines, he claimed that he left Camp Nelson at 1:30 a.m. Aug. 19 to return to the Fontana area about 250 miles south. Beauchamp said he arrived at a female friend’s home in Southern California at 6 a.m.

Bonnie Hood was slain about 3 a.m. that morning.

Deputy Dist. Atty. MacCrae O’Heaghra said other testimony impeached Beauchamp’s credibility.

However, defense attorney Charles Rothbaum challenged the credibility of Manuel’s eyewitness identification because of Manuel’s head injury.

“The evidence in this case stinks, your honor,” Rothbaum told Visalia Municipal Judge Joseph Kalashian.

But the judge said Manuel’s testimony and Beauchamp’s admission that he was in Camp Nelson the night of the murder are sufficient evidence to order the defendant to stand trial. Kalashian scheduled a Dec. 28 arraignment in Tulare County Superior Court.