Suspect in Murders of Man, Wife Arrested : Crime: Neill Matzen, who confessed to the slayings in a letter to a newspaper and vowed to kill himself, is discovered in a Fontana shack.

The latest twist in a bizarre murder triangle occurred Friday with the capture of a tow-truck driver who confessed in a letter to a newspaper that he was paid to kill a friend’s wife, killed the friend in self-defense, then vowed to kill himself in the desert.

Neill F. Matzen, 36, of Santa Ana was arrested at 11 a.m. in a squalid Fontana shack on a warrant charging him with the Nov. 24 murder of Donna Connaty, who was beaten to death with a lead pipe in her Buena Park home.

His blond hair matted and his clothes filthy from spending two nights in a storm drain, Matzen did not resist capture, Buena Park Police Lt. Terry Branum said.

Matzen had “befriended someone in the storm drain who told him how he could make money selling scrap metal,” Branum said. Matzen, who moved from the sewer to a shack Thursday, deposited some copper wiring at the scrap shop in the 16000 block of Miller Street. The proprietor required him to show identification and recognized Matzen’s picture from newspaper and television reports of his disappearance.

He then called Riverside County authorities, who notified Buena Park police. They apprehended Matzen at 11 a.m. Friday in the lean-to, located near the scrap shop.

During a two-hour interview in which police say he waived his rights, Matzen allegedly gave police a story of the Connaty deaths that matched the story offered in letters to police and his wife.

Later Friday, Matzen was housed at Orange County Jail, where he was held without bail until his arraignment next week in North Orange County Municipal Court.

Filled with allegations of trailer-park adultery and murder-for-hire, the bizarre case first unfolded last month in Buena Park with the slaying of Donna Connaty, a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange who was estranged from her husband, Richard.

She had charged her husband in court papers with abusing her and their three children. As a result, Richard Connaty moved from their home to a Santa Ana mobile home park, where his next-door neighbors were Neill and Cynthia R. Matzen. Donna Connaty visited and at some point gave Cynthia Matzen a dog, which later bit Matzen’s daughter. The Matzens then sued Donna Connaty. The events created bad feelings among the foursome, police said.

In Neill Matzen’s letter to the newspaper, dated Dec. 7, he admitted beating Donna Connaty to death in exchange for a promised $15,000 payment from her husband, who was to get the money by refinancing the couple’s house. 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.

Matzen then grabbed his pistol and shot Connaty squarely in the chest. Matzen said in the letter to the Orange County Register that the shoot-out occurred after he told Richard Connaty that he would no longer permit him to have an affair with Matzen’s wife.

Arrested for a brief time last week on suspicion of killing Richard Connaty, Matzen was released from the jail ward of Western Medical Center in Anaheim after the Orange County district attorney’s office ruled that he shot Richard Connaty in self-defense.

After the suicide and confession letters were received, Matzen was the subject of a two-day dragnet in the remote Chiriaco Summit area of Riverside County, where he had said his body could be found.

Times staff writer Marcida Dodson and correspondent Jon Nalick also contributed to this story.