Fugitive Matzen Arrested : Threatened Suicide Not Carried Out

Neill F. Matzen, the 36-year-old tow truck driver accused of killing his friend’s wife last month, was arrested today in Fontana and was being driven back to the Buena Park police headquarters for booking, a police spokesman said.

An arrest warrant was obtained and an all-points bulletin was issued Thursday by Buena Park police, who have been looking for Matzen since he disappeared after writing a letter of confession to a local newspaper, dated Dec. 7. He also wrote to police, telling them that he was going to commit suicide.

“He’s alive,” Buena Park Police Sgt. Terry Branum said. “He’s in custody in Fontana. They (Fontana police) said they got him and are taking care of a little business and will then ship him to us.”

In Matzen’s letter to the newspaper, he admitted beating to death Donna Connaty with a lead pipe on Nov. 24 in exchange for a $15,000 payment from her husband, Richard Connaty. Richard Connaty was killed by Matzen on Dec. 3 after he ran into Matzen’s Santa Ana mobile home, shouted, “You killed my wife,” and shot Matzen in the left shoulder.

After being wounded, Matzen grabbed his pistol, ran after Connaty and shot him squarely in the chest.

Matzen said in the letter that the shoot-out occurred after he told Richard Connaty that he would no longer permit him to have an affair with his wife, Cynthia.

Matzen was briefly arrested last week on suspicion of killing Richard Connaty but was released from the jail ward of Western Medical Center in Anaheim when the Orange County district attorney’s office ruled that he shot Connaty in self-defense.

Prosecutors also declined to charge him with the slaying of Donna Connaty because of insufficient evidence, they said at the time.

A two-day search for Matzen in the desert near Indio was launched Dec. 10 after he wrote his wife. In that letter, he told Cynthia Matzen that his body could be found in a remote desert hut near the Chiriaco Summit in Riverside County. But a two-day search of the area earlier this week turned up no trace of Matzen.

Branum said that Fontana police had wanted to question Matzen in connection with a crime there, but he did not immediately know the details.

Branum said this morning that a Fontana police detective received a telephone call from an informant who told him where Matzen could be found. Detectives went to the location, which Branum could not immediately identify, and found Matzen there.