Murder Suspect Seeks to Clear Name With Lawsuit : Litigation: Mary Kellel-Sophiea says homicide investigators wrongfully tried to pin her husband’s slaying on her. The detectives still believe she’s guilty.

Mary Kellel-Sophiea says she is on trial for murder. But it was her choice.

For more than two months last year, she faced a possible death sentence after being charged with the murder of her estranged husband. On Jan. 31, 1990, Gregory Sophiea was stabbed to death in his bed in the Shadow Hills home that the couple had shared for five years.

But then a prosecutor dropped the charges against her, telling a judge he did not have enough evidence to proceed with the case in court.

A year and a half later, the additional evidence has not been found. But Kellel-Sophiea is back in court. She is suing her accusers, charging two Los Angeles police detectives with violating her rights by arresting her without cause and conspiring to frame her with a murder she did not commit.

The 2-week-old civil trial before a jury in U.S. District Court has unfolded much like that of a murder trial.

Detectives testified about their investigation and identified an 18-year-old transient who has been convicted of the murder and who they believe conspired with Kellel-Sophiea to kill her husband. A medical examiner discussed the details of the autopsy. A next-door neighbor told the jury about finding the dead man and the blood-spattered butcher knife.

Though no death sentence rides on the jury’s verdict, the 10-member panel will, in effect, be asked to cast judgment on Kellel-Sophiea, deciding whether she has been wrongfully pursued by two obsessed investigators or possibly is a killer who has not only gotten away with her crime but is now seeking monetary damages from her pursuers.

Kellel-Sophiea, 40, now lives in Long Beach. She is seeking unspecified damages from detectives Woodrow Parks and Gary Milligan. She believes the jury will exonerate her by finding that the detectives wrongfully arrested her. She said such a verdict will finally help end the suspicion that surrounds her.

“If I was guilty, why wouldn’t I just go on with my life and thank God I had gotten away with it?” she asked in an interview last week. “Why would I go through with this trial? It’s like a murder trial. If I was guilty, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

The lawsuit focuses on what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 31 at the Sophiea family’s Orcas Avenue house and whether detectives assigned to the case correctly and honestly interpreted the evidence left by a killer. Kellel-Sophiea claims they did not.

“They threw this woman on a freight train to hell, and they still are trying to shovel coal on the fire,” said Ken Clark, one of her attorneys.

According to testimony at the trial, Gregory Sophiea and his wife argued on the last night of his life.

The couple had separated after 10 years of marriage but had agreed to meet at the house they owned--and where Gregory, a salesman and caterer, was staying--to discuss its sale.

Death Followed Quarrel

Kellel-Sophiea, a former advertising executive, testified that the couple argued over furniture she needed for her new apartment in Long Beach, and related financial matters.

Later, Gregory went to sleep in the master bedroom while his wife slept in another bedroom and their 6-year-old daughter, Kristen, slept in a third room.

In a tape-recorded interview with police on the day of the murder, Kellel-Sophiea said she was awakened shortly after 3 a.m. by a noise and heard a gurgling sound. Knowing her husband was asthmatic, she rushed to his bedroom and saw him lying on his back on the water bed gasping for breath.

She said she saw blood on the sheets and assumed he had injured himself--something that had occurred once before during a morning asthma attack. She did not notice the stab wounds on her husband’s chest and neck, she told the detectives.

Though there was a phone on the night stand Kellel-Sophiea ran to another phone in the house, dialed 911 to report her husband could not breathe and then ran to a next-door neighbor’s house for help. While the neighbor, Larry Rotoli, went into the bedroom to try to aid Sophiea, Kellel-Sophiea remained at the front of the house to direct paramedics inside.

When the paramedics arrived moments later, they found Gregory Sophiea dead, with seven stab wounds in the upper body.

Kellel-Sophiea was taken to the Foothill Division police station to await questioning while several detectives gathered at the scene of the crime. Among them was Parks, who had eight years experience as a homicide detective, and Milligan, who was working his first case as homicide detective trainee. They would be the lead detectives assigned to the case.

Among the pieces of evidence awaiting the detectives was a bloody butcher knife on the bedroom floor. They found the window in one of the bathrooms open to the back yard and an undamaged screen leaning on an outside wall. There was dirt on the toilet seat and the bathroom floor.

Bloodstains were found in other parts of the house, and there were bloody fingerprints on a back-yard fence. They also found pry marks on the outside of a rear door.

On the surface, evidence seemed to indicate that someone had broken into the house through the bathroom window, and escaped through the window and over the fence after stabbing Sophiea. But the detectives, after conducting a routine preliminary investigation, came to a different conclusion.

No Footprints

Parks and Milligan testified that they found no footprints in the dirt below the bathroom window. The detectives determined the window screen could not have been removed from the outside without being damaged. And using an oblique lighting technique, they determined that dust on the stone pathway that led to the bathroom window had not been disturbed--indicating no one had walked there that morning.

They also found chemical traces of what could have been blood in two sinks and a bathtub in the house.

The detectives developed the theory that the break-in had been staged to throw the investigation off course.

“We were all in unanimous agreement that this was not a burglary,” Milligan testified last week. “I don’t believe anyone went in or out of that window.”

Burglary eliminated, their suspicions turned to the widow. The detectives testified it was their opinion that the victim had been dead at least an hour before Kellel-Sophiea said she saw him struggling for breath and dialed 911. Also, a chemical test of her hands revealed traces of blood, though she had said she did not remember touching her husband before seeking help. Most of all, it was her story that did not ring true, the detectives said.

“This man with seven holes in his body was having an asthma attack?” Milligan testified. “What she told us was incredible. I wondered . . . why anyone would look at this individual and say he had an asthma attack.”

The two detectives questioned Kellel-Sophiea at the Foothill station for two hours, but she did not change her original story, according to a transcript of the interview, which was played for jurors. Instead, she became hysterical when told her husband had died of stab wounds, not an asthma attack, and that she was under arrest:

Parks: “You murdered the guy.”

Kellel-Sophiea: “Oh, come on. I don’t understand any of this . . . . What do you mean? I don’t even know what you are talking about . . . .”

Parks: “Well, let me tell you real quick . . . . I’m talking about you going to jail . . . killing your husband.”

Kellel-Sophiea: “I never . . . I’m no killer. I don’t have that in me . . . . I don’t believe this.”

Parks: “Well, believe it.”

Kellel-Sophiea: “ . . . I didn’t do anything wrong. Why would I? This has got to be a dream.”

Kellel-Sophiea was jailed and was arraigned two days later on murder charges in San Fernando Municipal Court. She pleaded not guilty.

Investigation of the case continued, and in mid-February, the investigators learned that the bloody fingerprints on the fence did not belong to Kellel-Sophiea as they had expected. Instead, they belonged to an 18-year-old drug abuser and former psychiatric patient named Tony Moore.

On Feb. 20, 1990, the detectives arrested Moore, and during a six-hour interrogation, Moore gave a variety of versions of what happened Jan. 31, alternately implicating himself and Kellel-Sophiea as the killer.

David Romley, another of Kellel-Sophiea’s attorneys, said a tape recording of the Moore interrogation is a key part of his client’s case against the detectives. He said the tape shows the detectives fell into “tunnel investigation” and “suspect of convenience” syndromes by steering Moore toward their set belief that the burglary was staged and that Kellel-Sophiea was involved.

“They just tried to mold everything into their conclusion,” Romley said.

According to a transcript of the taped interrogation, Moore initially denied ever being in the Sophiea house, but when told that his bloody fingerprints were found at the scene, he replied, “OK, you got me.”

Moore then told the two detectives step by step how he had broken into the house through a bathroom window and took a butcher knife from the kitchen. He said he stabbed Sophiea when the man awoke while Moore was in his bedroom looking for items to steal.

But the detectives told Moore he was lying, and he changed his story to include Kellel-Sophiea as the killer. He said she paid him $600 to kill her husband, but he said she did it herself when he was unable to go through with it. Moore said he and Kellel-Sophiea then staged the break-in to make it appear that a burglar had killed Sophiea.

Changing Stories

Moore changed his story two more times as the interrogation continued, going back to admitting that he had killed Sophiea while burglarizing the house, then once again saying Kellel-Sophiea was the killer, this time adding that he was romantically involved with her.

Kellel-Sophiea branded as preposterous Moore’s accusations that she was involved with him or the killing. Romley said the detectives led Moore “down the garden path” by feeding him information about Kellel-Sophiea and the evidence during the early stage of the interrogation, which allowed him to later concoct her involvement in the killing.

Romley said he intends to play the tape for the jury this week, though Assistant City Atty. Honey A. Lewis, who is defending the two detectives, has opposed allowing jurors to hear it. Lewis, Parks and Milligan declined to discuss the case before completion of the trial.

Following Moore’s arrest, Kellel-Sophiea was re-arraigned on murder charges, this time including an allegation of murder for financial gain, which carries a possible death penalty. The financial gain allegation was added because police and prosecutors believed Kellel-Sophiea was motivated to kill her husband to collect insurance money and to avoid having to share the proceeds from the sale of the house.

Moore later pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. But detectives were unable to find evidence substantiating Moore’s claims about Kellel-Sophiea’s involvement, and charges against her were dropped on April 5, 1990, the day a preliminary hearing was set to begin.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig R. Richman testified during the federal trial last week that the charges could be reinstated if additional evidence against Kellel-Sophiea is ever found. He also said he has seen no evidence that dissuades him from his belief that the burglary at the Sophiea house was staged.

Parks and Milligan also are unswayed in their suspicions of the widow. Both have testified that they still believe she was involved in her husband’s slaying.

“I think she and Tony Moore entered into a conspiracy,” Milligan said.

Kellel-Sophiea’s attorneys have sought to bolster her innocence with a variety of testimony and witnesses.

Though the detectives said Sophiea was dead an hour before his wife sought help, Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Irwin Goldin, who conducted the Sophiea autopsy, testified that it was impossible to pinpoint the time of death within the two hours before paramedics arrived. Two private experts in criminology have testified that the bathroom screen can easily be removed from outside the house, contrary to the detectives’ view.

Wounds Unnoticed

Rotoli, the neighbor who Kellel-Sophiea went to for help that night, testified that, although he spent two minutes attempting to render help to Sophiea, he also did not notice any stab wounds on the man’s body--largely because the victim’s chest was thickly covered with hair.

Rotoli also said he washed blood off his hands in the kitchen sink. And a forensic expert testified that tests for trace amounts of blood found in the other sink and bathtub and on Kellel-Sophiea’s hands could be inaccurate or could be identifying blood unrelated to the slaying.

Kellel-Sophiea’s attorneys charge that all of their information was available to the detectives immediately after the slaying but that they bungled the case by focusing too soon on Kellel-Sophiea. And now, having accused her, they refuse to back down.

“Before they even got out to the crime scene they were thinking the wife did it,” Romley said. “Then they saw the burglary evidence, and they didn’t want to look at it. They had a predetermined mind-set. They already had her convicted.”

Kellel-Sophiea said she remains fearful that she could lose her freedom again.

“I don’t know if they will ever stop,” she said of Parks and Milligan. “That’s why I am doing this. I want to stop them from doing this to anyone else.”