Trial Starts in Murder That Shocked Palisades : Courts: Teen-ager was killed just days before her graduation. A private security guard is accused of the crime.

At dawn on the eve of her high school graduation, the battered body of 18-year-old Teak Dyer was found on the floor of a Pacific Palisades bathroom.

Before day’s end, a security guard who told police he had “stumbled upon” the bloody scene was arrested and later charged with the murder of the young woman.

Now, more than two years after the crime that shocked Westsiders and sparked efforts to tighten controls on the private security guard industry, Rodney Darnell Garmanian--also charged with soliciting the murders of a judge, prosecutor and investigator while in custody--is on trial for his life.

The emotion-laden proceedings, which began last week and are expected to last well into next year, offer a glimpse into the less-than-storybook lifestyles of affluent teen-agers, the workings of an unregulated cadre of gun-toting security guards, and the private anguish of two sets of parents seated on opposite sides of the Santa Monica courtroom.

The tone of the trial was set by Deputy Dist. Atty. Lauren Weis, who told the six-man, six-woman jury that the victim’s last night--June 21, 1988--began as “a night of joyous celebration,” capped by a Palisades High graduation party at the Santa Monica Pier carousel.

“They toasted to life and their futures,” the prosecutor said, as the girl’s parents wept in the front row. “No one could know that Teak Dyer had no future.”

Her father, Rod Dyer, is a noted graphics artist; her mother, Jackie Dyer, worked as comptroller for film producer Steve Tisch before moving to Northern California.

Weis said the evidence will show that the former MacGuard night patrolman accosted the girl while on duty, attempted to rape her in the locked bathroom of the Topa Building in the Palisades village, handcuffed and beat her when she rebuffed his advances, and killed her with three shots from his service revolver to avoid arrest.

Garmanian is charged separately with trying to arrange the contract killings of Los Angeles Municipal Judge David Horwitz, Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss and Los Angeles Police Detective John Rockwood in the fall of 1988, again, said Weis, “to save his own head.”

Tapes of radio transmissions on the night of the murder, and testimony from Garmanian’s supervisor and other guards, show that he failed to maintain contact with his office at about the time witnesses said they heard noises similar to gunshots. The defendant reported finding the victim’s partially nude body on his routine early-morning rounds by radioing, “I’ve got, uh, I guess, a 187 here,” a reference to state Penal Code Section 187--murder.

Fingerprints of the Brentwood teen-ager were found on the passenger-side door of Garmanian’s patrol car, a .38-caliber bullet found beneath her body was linked to the defendant’s handgun, and several fellow guards testified to uncharacteristic behavior by the usually reliable man on the night of the murder. The co-workers added that they had noticed scratches on Garmanian’s face and arms--”like fingernails leave”--after the incident.

During the trial’s first week, a heavy scratch reappeared on Garmanian’s nose in exactly the same place shown in his booking photographs. The scratch worsened as the week wore on, prompting Weis to comment that the defendant’s scratching of the spot “shows a consciousness of guilt” akin to Lady MacBeth’s repeated attempts to wash away her “damned spot” in Shakespeare’s drama.

According to testimony from the last person to see the victim alive, her friend, Nicole Rabin, Teak Dyer began the summer night at her mother’s home, preparing food for the party. She and friends later drank champagne and each did a line of cocaine before leaving for the pier, where police broke up the festivities two hours later because of alcohol on the premises.

Rabin, now 20, testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution for perjury and providing drugs. She said she had lied at Garmanian’s preliminary hearing, when she said her friend had not been drinking or taking drugs, because she did not want to besmirch the victim’s name.

An autopsy found that Dyer was legally drunk and had traces of cocaine in her system. Defense attorneys fought to introduce that as evidence, arguing that the girl may have gone willingly with Garmanian because people on coke often do things they would not ordinarily do, to get more drugs.

“Getting shot three times is not one of those,” snapped Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Weisberg.

Rabin said Dyer remained in the car when they stopped briefly at a friend’s home en route to Rustic Canyon Park, where the party was to resume. It was just after midnight when she returned to find an empty car, and assumed that Dyer had left with another friend.

The incident sparked fear and distrust among many residents of the Palisades, which averages less than one murder a year, and caused many to switch security firms or eliminate such services. Some parents began teaching their children how to distinguish a “real” policeman from a security guard. MacGuard Security Services was sold to Westec Security Inc.

Defense attorneys Ezekiel Perlo and Paul Takakjian made no opening statement and declined to disclose their strategy. At sidebar conferences outside the presence of the jury, they have indicated that they may follow the lead of Garmanian’s previous attorney, Melvin Belli, who attempted to point the finger at another security guard who had access to the same building.

Jackie Dyer, often beside her ex-husband, sat in the front row of the courtroom, hiding her eyes when blowups of her daughter’s bloody body are held up. Like family members of many crime victims, she has found herself reluctantly thrust into an activist role, fighting--unsuccessfully so far--for state reforms in the screening, monitoring and accountability of security guards.

A MacGuard security guard testified that the firm offered little training and that Garmanian worked there for six months, despite complaints that he behaved inappropriately toward women. Earlier, the Dyer family won a $1-million settlement in a wrongful death suit against MacGuard and its owner.

Across the courtroom sit the defendant’s mother, Jane Garmanian of Chicago, his sister and his infant nephew.

The mothers, brought together by a murder that has ruined both families’ lives, do not acknowledge each other’s presence.