Trial of Gunman’s Brother Begins in Hawthorne Murder Case

In 1983, Catherine Stroup was found shot to death in her Hawthorne apartment. Her husband, James, was arrested at the scene and charged with murder, and spent seven months in jail before jurors acquitted him.

Now, nearly eight years after Stroup’s death, a new Torrance Superior Court jury has been convened to consider whether the woman was killed as part of a bizarre murder-for-hire plot that prosecutors say involved the couple’s son-in-law.

The trial of 27-year-old Paul Leach, an acquaintance of the son-in-law, marks the third time a jury has been asked to review the tangled trail of evidence that Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Duarte says proves that Stroup was murdered by paid killers. The trial opened Thursday.

Leach’s older brother, Peter, was convicted in 1988 of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of financial gain. He is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

In opening arguments Thursday, Duarte told jurors that the Stroups’ son-in-law, Michael Seawright, promised to give the Leach brothers a new truck, $80,000 cash and a half-interest in a water delivery business if they would murder his parents-in-law.

Defense attorneys William MacCabe and Ron Rothman said they will outline their strategy later in the trial.

But MacCabe hinted that the defense will contend that Paul Leach never intended to kill Catherine Stroup.

“The problem (the prosecutor) has with this case is proving the intention of my client when he entered the apartment,” MacCabe said. “That’s all I’m going to say at this point.”

Two years before Catherine Stroup’s murder, James Stroup had agreed to bankroll a water delivery business in Twentynine Palms if Seawright would manage it.

Over time, truck repair costs for the company they named S & S Water ate up most of the meager profits that were coming in, Stroup testified Thursday.

But according to a tape-recorded statement Peter Leach gave police after his 1984 arrest, Seawright believed he could turn a profit if he could get his father-in-law out of the picture.

Peter Leach later recanted his 1984 confession, insisting that he saw Seawright kill Catherine Stroup.

Although Seawright was arrested and jailed briefly in 1984, he was released for lack of evidence. Charges have never been filed, and Seawright repeatedly has denied any involvement in the shooting.

A false-arrest lawsuit Seawright filed in 1985 against Los Angeles County and sheriff’s homicide detectives was dismissed early this year because Seawright’s attorneys did not pursue it.

Peter Leach, who occasionally did mechanical work on S & S Water’s trucks, told police that Seawright gave him a gun he had taken from the Stroups’ weekend home in Twentynine Palms, instructions on how to find the Rosecrans Avenue apartment where they lived during the week and detailed information about their work schedules.

In a statement to police, Paul Leach said his brother awoke him at 5:30 a.m. on April 5, 1983, and told him they were going “to do some work.”

The pair drove 145 miles to Hawthorne, Paul Leach said. When they arrived, he said, he believed that they were going to burglarize the Stroups’ apartment and leave.

With James Stroup’s car missing from the carport and Catherine Stroup scheduled to be at work, the pair expected to find an empty apartment, Paul Leach said in his statement. Catherine Stroup, however, had called in sick that day.

Paul Leach said she let them in the door after Peter, who had met her several times in Twentynine Palms, asked for cash to buy gasoline for the drive home.

Once inside, however, the situation turned violent.

Paul Leach told police that Peter grabbed a red heart-shaped pillow and put it over the muzzle of the pistol before firing four bullets at close range into Catherine Stroup.

The pair left the apartment through a back window. James Stroup, who came home from work about 30 minutes later, discovered his wife’s body and was booked on murder charges. A jury acquitted him seven months later.

Sheriff’s homicide Detective Mike Lee said Thursday that at that time he believed Stroup was a guilty man who had beaten the system.

Several months later, however, Anaheim police arrested a man carrying a .22-caliber pistol that turned out to be the murder weapon. Police traced the gun back to the Leach brothers, who had sold it a few weeks after the murder.

“ ‘Whoops,’ ” Lee said he thought when he heard of the new evidence. “I realized that, well, the system does work.”

James Stroup “is a victim in the purest sense of the word,” Lee said.

Paul Leach’s trial is expected to last one month.