Unknown How Marine Died, Official Says : Inquiry: The ruling is hailed by the parents of Capt. Jeffrey Digman, who believe their son was murdered.

After re-examining 2-year-old evidence, the armed forces medical examiner has now ruled that it is unknown how Marine Capt. Jeffrey Digman died.

Digman was found dead in 1989, shot in the head in his home. Marine officials and the Riverside County coroner had said it was suicide. But Digman’s parents in Cypress say it was murder.

“Somebody out there shot our son,” said Bill Digman, a retired engineer. “There’s a culpable person out there still walking the streets.”

Digman has spent $80,000 trying to prove the military wrong and to track the killer he believes shot his son and left him sprawled on his bed in a pool of blood.

Digman and his wife, Donna, have re-created the death scene in their home; they speak about bullet trajectories and blood spatters with newly acquired finesse. And obsessed with unraveling the mystery, they have hired two detectives, four pathologists and a scientist.

For them, the recent ruling by the armed forces medical examiner, the highest in the chain of command, is a victory. They now plan to battle the decision to close the investigation.

In a letter to Bill Digman, Dr. Richard C. Froede, the armed forces medical examiner, said he had reviewed coroner’s and Naval Investigative Service reports, photographs of the body, accounts of the two autopsies, and an article published in The Times about the young man’s death.

“After careful examination and much thought, I have classified the manner of death in this case as undetermined based on these materials,” Froede wrote in a letter dated Feb. 22, 1991.

The Naval Investigative Service, however, has closed its investigation and officials say they do not plan to reopen it unless new information surfaces.

Digman, 30, was found in his bedroom Jan. 22, 1989; blood stained the bedding and trickled down the sides of the brass bed frame. The young captain, who had worked at San Diego’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot, was assigned to Puerto Rico shortly before his death. He had returned to his home in Temecula, which he shared with a former supervising officer, for a short visit.

At the time of his death, his blood alcohol level was .24--or more than double the legal limit for driving. In his evaluation reports, Digman is depicted as conscientious, honest, intelligent and tireless. A devoted runner, he usually jogged 10 miles a day. A quirky and meticulous man, Digman was so neat that he didn’t like friends to put glasses on his coffee table. While described as an officer with a bright future, he was also nicknamed “Dr. Gloom.”

Riverside County’s coroner’s officials ruled Digman’s death a suicide but, puzzled by the circumstances, they asked the NIS six months later to step in.

Experts hired by the family have raised the following questions:

* Digman was left-handed, yet he was shot above the right ear.

* The weapon found at his feet was a .44 magnum revolver, yet the wound was relatively small, inconsistent with that kind of powerful gun.

These unexplained circumstances gnaw at the Digmans.

“Somebody shot Jeffrey; somebody killed him,” Bill Digman said. “He’s in a grave out there and the most we can say is, ‘Jeffrey, we can’t find out how you died.’ ”