Man’s Killing Surfaces Again Decade Later : Murder: Karen Quiter recently learned that police have a suspect in the 1980 slaying of her father; authorities plan to link the case to a man’s retrial in a double killing.

It was three days before Karen Quiter of Yorba Linda learned that the body of the elderly man found in a clump of bushes by a Fullerton College bookstore was her 75-year-old father, John Houston Compton.

It was more than 10 years before she was told by law enforcement authorities they believed that they knew who had stabbed him to death.

The man now identified in court papers as her father’s killer was not around all those years the 42-year-old medical assistant was pestering Fullerton police about the investigation into her father’s death in August, 1980.

His name is Richard Delmer Boyer, now 33, and he was sitting on Death Row at the state penitentiary at San Quentin, awaiting the appeal of his conviction in the robbery-murder of an elderly Fullerton couple.

At Boyer’s 1984 trial for that murder, prosecutors suspected a link between Boyer and the Compton killing but did not pursue it, concentrating instead on the murder of the elderly couple.

“At the time, our case against Boyer was very, very strong and we did not believe we needed to bring in the other murder to seek the death penalty,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Edgar A. Freeman explained.

But the Compton murder looms importantly now because Boyer is back in court.

The state Supreme Court two years ago granted Boyer a new trial in the Fullerton couple’s murder, saying Fullerton police had coerced him into a confession.

Justice David H. Eagleson wrote in a 5-2 majority opinion that the case was “a relatively rare but distressing instance in which the outcome is determined by the constable’s blunders.”

Now prosecutors must bring Boyer back for a retrial but without his confession. They still have strong evidence: a witness who drove to the couple’s home with him, bloody clothes and a knife found at his house. But it was the confession--Boyer’s chilling account that he had committed the murders in a frenzy after watching the movie “Halloween II”--that helped persuade the first jury to return a death verdict instead of the lesser verdict of life in prison without parole.

Because it may be more difficult to return him to Death Row without that confession, prosecutors have decided to put the Compton murder before the jury too. However, it could only be introduced if Boyer is once again convicted in the couple’s murder and the trial reaches a penalty phase.

In a penalty phase, prosecutors may introduce evidence of other crimes the defendant may have committed even if he is not charged with that crime.

Boyer, who has remained in custody since winning his appeal, has not been charged with the Compton murder. But Freeman has included it in the retrial as “evidence in aggravation” for use at a penalty phase. It could be the closest prosecutors ever come to trying anybody for Compton’s murder.

Karen Quiter knows none of the details about why her father’s murder may or may not be important in the Boyer case. She doesn’t even have enough information to think of Boyer as her father’s killer.

What she knows is that for the first time--she learned about Boyer about two months ago--she has a name to connect to her father’s death.

“It was very difficult to hear all this, after all these years,” she said. “It brought back all the pain from the past. But at least there is something now. Always before, my father’s death was this unfinished business in my life.”

Compton was a widower, living alone in a trailer park in Fullerton, a retired tractor mechanic. Since his wife’s death three years before, he had doted on his two grandchildren--the children of his only child, Karen--delighting in taking them swimming in the pool at the trailer park. Two weeks before his death, he had gone to a professional photographer to have his picture taken, with wallet-size photos for his grandchildren.

“He was very active for his age, really wonderful with the kids,” Quiter recalls.

In the summer months, when it stayed light later in the day, Compton enjoyed driving to his favorite restaurant, Coco’s, at Euclid and Commonwealth avenues, for dinner. He was always back by dark, ready for his daughter’s telephone call to see if he had returned safely. But on Aug. 22, 1980, after a trip to Coco’s, Compton could not be reached by telephone. Quiter and her husband drove to his home but couldn’t find him. Quiter immediately drove to the Fullerton Police Department to file a missing person report.

“They told us there wasn’t anything they could do for 72 hours,” she recalls.

What she did not know then was that her father’s body had already been found, still warm, dumped at the college less than an hour after he was last seen at Coco’s. It was three days before the body was matched with the missing person report.

The police had one clue. Inside Compton’s car, which was found abandoned two weeks later in Santa Monica, was a cash register receipt from a McDonald’s in La Mirada. Two employees at that McDonald’s remember a young man at that time coming to the drive-up window.

He stood out, they said, because they could see he had blood all over his shirt. They also said the man could very well be Richard Boyer.

But those identifications were not made until Boyer, who lived in El Monte, was arrested two years later for the stabbing deaths of the Fullerton couple, 68-year-old Aileen Harbitz and her 67-year-old husband, Francis.

Boyer had done gardening work for them and finally admitted to police that he had killed them in a robbery.

After two trials, he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984. But in 1989, the state Supreme Court found that Fullerton Police Detective Richard Lewis flagrantly ignored Boyer’s demands that he be allowed to have a lawyer.

Karen Quiter knew none of this. The Boyer name meant nothing to her until prosecutor Freeman told her about him two months ago. And now Quiter is upset that Fullerton authorities did not tell her back at Boyer’s first trial in 1984 that they were looking at him as her father’s killer.

“If they had any idea how difficult it’s been all these years, not knowing anything,” she said.

Detective Lewis has declined to discuss the Compton murder because of the pending Boyer trial. But Freeman is quick to defend him.

“I know we should do a lot more hand-holding with our victims than we do, but the police also have an obligation not to unfairly raise their expectations,” Freeman said. “Mrs. Quiter is very, very fortunate to have someone with Detective Lewis’ tenacity on this case.”

Boyer’s attorney, James G. Merwin, believes that the reason is less complicated: “They don’t have a case against Richard (Boyer) in the Compton murder, and they know it.”

Merwin claims that Lewis is carrying on a personal vendetta against Boyer because he was embarrassed about the state Supreme Court criticisms directed at him.

“He’s now trying to tie in this Compton death because he’s determined that Richard is going to be sent back to Death Row,” Merwin said.

Merwin also has some strong criticisms for the district attorney’s office.

“They know they don’t have enough evidence to charge Richard with murder in that (Compton) killing,” Merwin added. “So this is their way of trying to clean up that case, by tossing it in with the Harbitz case.”

Boyer is scheduled for trial in March. But Freeman has agreed to a postponement if necessary to give authorities time to honor Merwin’s request for DNA (genetic code) testing of hairs found on Compton’s body. Merwin says he believes that the DNA results will eliminate his client as a suspect in that killing.

But if the Compton murder does remain in the Boyer case, Quiter said she intends to be there for the trial.

“After all this time, I have to see for myself,” she said. “Somewhere some kind of justice has to be done for my father.”