Victim of Deputy’s Beating Calls for Federal Probe : Crime: Donald Van Ort, displaying evidence he claims sheriff’s deputies missed after another deputy was killed attempting to rob him, says he has lost faith that the department can investigate itself.

The victim of a beating by a San Diego sheriff’s deputy Friday called on federal authorities to investigate the case because he said he has lost trust in the Sheriff’s Department’s ability to investigate itself impartially.

Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Stanewich was shot to death Wednesday by a fellow deputy called to the home during the robbery. Since the incident, the department has launched an investigation to determine whether Stanewich’s would-be accomplice in the attack was another deputy.

Two days after the off-duty Stanewich forced his way into Donald Van Ort’s Encinitas home at gunpoint, the 32-year-old travel agent said he still had not been asked by sheriff’s investigators to identify an accomplice who arrived with Stanewich at his door before fleeing.

Van Ort said he recognized the second man as one of several deputies who arrived at his home in May searching for narcotics. Stanewich was one of them, he said, and returned, wearing latex gloves and a stocking mask, to empty a safe in the house of cash and jewelry.

In the process of robbing the home, Stanewich bound and handcuffed Van Ort, forced a pillowcase over his head and doused it with lighter fluid. He also bound and gagged Van Ort’s 82-year-old grandmother. While Van Ort was on the floor, Deputy Gary Steadman entered the house, warned Stanewich to stop moving toward him, and fired three times. Stanewich was hit twice.

Steadman reached down and pulled off Stanewich’s mask. He realized then that he had shot and killed a friend and colleague from the Sheriff’s Department’s Encinitas station.

Van Ort and his attorney, August Anderson, said Friday that they had found evidence at the scene that homicide detectives had overlooked. Anderson said a broken vial containing an unidentified substance and a matchbook from Caesar’s Palace that he said dropped from Stanewich’s pocket were turned over to sheriff’s detectives Friday.

“Maybe some independent agency should look over the shoulders of the Sheriff’s Department,” she said. “They’ve already missed what could be crucial evidence at the scene. I just think it’s important to be extra safe. . . . We want to go by the book so that no evidence is missed. To have the Sheriff’s Department doing this investigation is like having the fox guarding the henhouse.”

Anderson said she had asked the FBI to take over the investigation, and that she plans to contact the U.S. attorney’s office. Spokesmen for both agencies said they had not been contacted but were not likely to accept the case.

Because Van Ort fears staying at his Encinitas home, Anderson said, he has moved elsewhere in the county. His parole officer had refused his request to leave the county so that he would be safer until the accomplice is identified and arrested.

Sheriff Jim Roache defended his department’s handling of the case Friday and said he had two teams of homicide officers working “almost continually” on the case since it occurred Wednesday morning.

“We have a few leads but wouldn’t call them tremendously substantial,” he said. “My objective is to successfully conclude a criminal investigation. I need to identify a suspect and get enough evidence to sustain a criminal complaint. I can’t do that yet.”

Although he was not aware of the evidence Van Ort discovered, Roache said it is not unusual for homicide detectives to return to a crime scene several times.

He said all the deputies who appeared May 30 with Stanewich to search Van Ort’s home for narcotics have been photographed and questioned.

Roache acknowledged that Van Ort had not been asked to try to identify the person who accompanied Stanewich but would be requested to do so as soon as possible.

Van Ort is receiving no protection from the Sheriff’s Department, Roache said, because “there is no demonstrated reason he should.”

At a press conference Friday, Anderson suggested that Stanewich may have known Julie Malone, a former girlfriend of Van Ort’s whom Van Ort was charged with assaulting in 1989.

Through her attorney, Malone denied knowing the dead officer or having any connection to the Sheriff’s Department.

Van Ort said Thursday that he spotted Malone sitting in her car near his house the day of the attack. Malone’s attorney, Bradley Hallen, said his client was working at her job as a Del Mar Race Track secretary at the time of the incident. He also denied a suggestion made by Van Ort that an anonymous tip by Malone led to the May 30 search by deputies of Van Ort’s home.

“She was not the person who gave the information to the Sheriff’s Department,” Hallen said. “She has had no contact with (Van Ort), a convicted felon. She has been dragged through the mud by this paranoid individual.”

On Friday, the Encinitas substation, where both Stanewich and Steadman worked, was sullen as workers questioned how this could have happened at the tight-knit sheriff’s outpost opened in the early 1970s.

“There’s still disbelief,” said Capt. Bob Apostolos. “People are asking ‘How could this have happened with one of our own detectives? How could it have happened here? You do an inventory of your thoughts--anything you can think of, clues to a personality change that would have told us this was going to happen. These things are going through your mind.”

No clearer picture of Stanewich or the motivation for his attack emerged Friday.

Roache said the deputy had only one blemish on his record--a recent reprimand for conducting an authorized surveillance.

“Every indication was that he was a competent, capable, trusted deputy,” Roache said.

Added Jack Drown, who was the assistant sheriff in charge of law enforcement services before becoming Coronado’s police chief this year: “He’s definitely not one of those people who you would automatically think would be capable of something like this. His name never stuck out.”

Former Sheriff John Duffy said he never had problems with Stanewich, 36, who began his career with the department in 1981 and was promoted to detective last September. But Duffy stressed that an unauthorized surveillance is not to be taken lightly.

“It indicates a pattern of doing things on your own without a supervisor knowing,” he said. “After 38 years in this business, my admonition is that you never really know the face you see every day.”

Apostolos said the Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. sent a psychologist Thursday and Friday to the Encinitas station to talk with his 97 employees--civilians, uniformed officers and detectives--both in groups and alone about their feelings. He said several other psychologists have called to offer their services as well.

“I told the folks to take advantage of this,” Apostolos said. “It’s difficult to keep your mind on your work. There’s distractions, being that the accomplice has not been identified yet.”

Another detective who asked for anonymity said the entire story about Stanewich has yet to come out and that so far, the press has highlighted only the bad parts of his life.

“He’s done good things in the past, but you wouldn’t know it from the press reports,” he said. “He was an excellent traffic cop, a good motorcycle officer. His demeanor and willingness to work with people, I just can’t say enough about it.”

The officer said he had talked with a counselor about his mixed feeling about being so close to the case, which distressed and sickened him. “It’s one of those things, to keep those kind of feelings in, it’s bad. We’re all just waiting to see what the investigation will reveal, to get this behind us.”

Times staff writers Barry M. Horstman and Ray Tessler contributed to this report.