Israeli Court Convicts 2 Men in California Killings

After an unusual two-nation investigation of an Alfred Hitchcock-style plot, a three-judge court in Tel Aviv on Tuesday convicted two Israelis of murder and conspiracy in the 1987 shooting deaths of a wealthy California couple.

Yair Orr, 30, and Nadov Nakan, 33, were sentenced to life in prison for killing Jack and Carmen Hively as they slept in their $1.2-million Montecito estate overlooking the Pacific. The killers allegedly acted on behalf of the Hively’s son-in-law, Charles LeGros, who Israeli prosecutors said remains a fugitive.

It is rare for Israel to try its own citizens on charges filed against them in other countries; this is the first time a trial of Israelis was carried out for a crime committed in the United States. Israelis cannot be extradited for trial overseas if they were Israeli citizens at the time of the alleged crime.

Prosecutors charged that Orr and Nakan--who will serve their sentences in Israel--were hired by LeGros to kill the Hivelys so that LeGros and his wife would inherit millions of dollars plus the spacious Hively estate near Santa Barbara. Orr was a business partner of LeGros and reportedly recruited Nakan, a childhood friend from the kibbutz where they both grew up.

Thirty-five witnesses testified in the case, all brought from the United States. “The conviction was inevitable,” said prosecutor Judith Amsterdam. The judges said it was irrelevant who fired the .22-caliber pistol; both Orr and Nakan were, in effect, guilty of the murder. Defense attorneys said they would appeal the verdict to Israel’s Supreme Court.

LeGros and Orr, according to court records, attempted to interest the Hivelys in several business deals, including an arms sale between Israel and China. Investigators surmised that the plan to kill the couple was developed when it became evident that Carmen Hively and Jack, her fourth husband, were uninterested.

LeGros and his wife had an iron-clad alibi for the October slayings; they were in Chicago. Orr and Nakan said they were in Maryland at the time. But their alibi evaporated when Orr’s jilted California girlfriend confessed that she had met him at Monterey Airport on the night of the killings.

With the shattering testimony in hand, Santa Barbara investigators drew Israeli police into the case. They jointly interviewed an Israeli woman who had backed up the Israeli suspects’ alibi. She said she had lied because Orr and Nakan told her they were on duty for the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

The Israelis began their own investigation, including wiretaps of the suspects’ homes, a legal procedure here. Investigators picked up conversations between LeGros and Orr. A man with whom Orr had served in the Israeli army also recanted his support for their alibi. Last year, the prosecution took 5,000 pages of reports, meticulously translated into Hebrew, and the string of witnesses and went to court. Much of the cost was paid by Santa Barbara County.

The court drama was the second in recent weeks involving suspects in California slayings. Last month, an American couple who fled to Israel were ordered extradited to the United States to face charges of killing a Manhattan Beach secretary with a package bomb. They can be extradited because both were American citizens at the time of the bombing.