Suspect in 1982 Killing Denies Guilt

A Minnesota convict charged with the rape and murder of a Cal State Northridge staff member nine years ago denied any involvement in the widely publicized slaying during a hearing Thursday in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

Jonathan Karl Lundh, 43, is charged with robbing, raping and strangling Patty Lynne Cohen on April 27, 1982, after she was abducted from the parking garage at a Holiday Inn in Burbank where she had attended a self-improvement seminar. Her nude body was found five days later in the trunk of her car in a North Hollywood alley.

Lundh became a suspect in the slaying shortly after the body was discovered. Although he was convicted of assaulting another woman in the hotel parking lot shortly before Cohen disappeared, he was not charged with the slaying at the time because prosecutors said they lacked evidence.

Los Angeles police said they arrested Lundh after finding new evidence last year.

Lundh is described in court records as a con artist with a lengthy criminal record involving fraud and theft. He could face the death penalty if convicted of Cohen’s slaying. He has not entered a plea in the case but during a hearing Thursday, he denied killing Cohen.

“I had no knowledge of these events,” he said. “It was determined in 1982 that I was the wrong man . . . It is hard for me to understand how they can take the wrong man in 1982 and make him the right man in 1990.”

Lundh’s comments came while Judge Kenneth Freeman conducted a hearing on Lundh’s request that he be allowed to act as his own attorney. Freeman granted the request and scheduled Lundh’s arraignment for Feb. 21.

Cohen, 40, of Tarzana was assistant to the dean of the CSUN School of Arts. The disappearance and slaying of the divorced mother of two teen-agers was widely publicized at the time.

After Lundh was arrested in a stolen car May 6, 1982, he became a suspect in the Cohen slaying because Los Angeles police said he closely matched a description of the man who unsuccessfully attempted to abduct Ruth Kilday from the hotel parking lot only minutes before Cohen disappeared.

According to court records, he was also a suspect in two other attempted assaults on women in the Valley in 1982.

However, Lundh was charged only with the assault on Kilday. He was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

The Cohen case remained dormant until early last year when a detective reopened the investigation. Police and Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip H. Rabichow declined to disclose what evidence was gathered that led to the new charges.

Lundh’s wife, Gale, who married him in Minnesota a year and a half ago, watched Thursday’s hearing and supported her husband’s denial of the charges. “They had the wrong guy in 1982 and they have the wrong guy now,” she said. “I know he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Lundh was extradited to Los Angeles last month from Stillwater, Minn., where he had been in prison since March for grand theft.

Word that charges finally had been filed in the 9-year-old case were a happy surprise to some of Cohen’s friends at CSUN.

Ralph Heidsiek, former dean of the School of Arts and now a music professor, said he was happy that authorities had not forgotten the case.

“I expected that it was long gone,” he said. “But this gives credibility to the belief that things like this won’t be forgotten. There have been times when we would reflect on this crime and wonder why nothing could have been done. It was grievous and very painful for all of us who knew Patty.”