How a Woman’s Tidy World Became a Jumbled Mess : Violence: The stripper and aspiring actress had a marriage of convenience and a lover who killed himself. When she took her life, she left behind a tangle of death, heartbroken families, bitterness and litigation.

Vicky Howden was married to one man, in love with another and pursuing a third for drugs and compassion in the months before her violent death.

A British emigre of modest schooling but arresting looks, the 26-year-old Howden embodied the Hollywood dream unrealized. With one legitimate acting job to her credit, she stripped at bachelor parties to pay the bills and otherwise survived by keeping different aspects of her life in tidy, separate compartments.

She did not, for example, mix love and marriage and had wed her American husband strictly for working papers. Friends of her lover, a California Highway Patrol officer, did not know she was married. She often wept on her way to stag parties, but once there became the consummate professional, commanding more repeat requests than any dancer in her company.

She could be endearing and dangerous--leading her CHP boyfriend on exhilarating, high-speed chases along the freeway.

But unexpected emotion seeped into Howden’s world and suddenly, its neat compartments became a messy jumble. When she died June 10 by firing a .357 magnum revolver into her heart, Howden left behind a tangle of death, heartbroken families, bitterness and litigation:

Her lover had killed himself a month earlier and her husband-of-convenience sat mortally wounded at the dining room table, an apparent victim of Howden’s despair before she killed herself. Four children were left fatherless; two of them have filed a civil suit alleging negligence by Ventura County, a major drug company and a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, described by police as Howden’s former boyfriend, is under investigation by state medical authorities for unprofessional conduct. And Howden’s own family is alleging a police cover-up.

Victoria Denise Howden came to Los Angeles about six years ago, when she was nearly 21, to work for Dr. V. Charles Charuvastra’s family as a nanny.

Her mother, Geraldine Morgan, said Howden had been eager to leave Torquay, a balmy corner of England where she modeled for local shops.

In Los Angeles, she became her employer’s mistress, according to police records and Howden’s relatives. She and Charuvastra, now 46, lived together in Sherman Oaks about three years after he and his wife separated, those sources said.

Howden moved out in November, 1989, according to police reports. Her mother said that “the relationship came to an end and it was time to leave.”

After Howden’s death, detectives discovered that the handgun used to kill Howden and her husband, Charles House, was registered to Charuvastra. They also realized that they had seen the doctor’s name elsewhere: on eight bottles of drugs found in Howden’s apartment. Ranging from diet pills to diuretics, all had been prescribed between February, 1989--when Howden was living with Charuvastra--and February, 1991, four months before her death, police reports show.

Among the medications was Prozac, a popular but controversial antidepressant that has been blamed for suicide and murder in about 75 lawsuits nationwide.

Howden’s autopsy report showed no Prozac in her bloodstream. But in a negligence suit filed in Van Nuys Superior Court, House’s children from his first marriage, ages 13 and 9, allege that Prozac was a factor in their father’s death.

The suit’s defendants include Charuvastra and Prozac’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly & Co. of Indianapolis, which maintains that the drug’s undeserved, negative publicity is the product of an anti-psychiatry campaign waged by the Church of Scientology.

Medical board officials have declined to discuss details of their investigation, but confirmed that it centers on whether Charuvastra should have prescribed medication to someone described in police reports as his “former girlfriend.”

The Thai-born Charuvastra, who grew up and studied medicine in Australia, has declined requests for interviews. One source close to the case said Howden kept pestering Charuvastra for drugs and sympathy after they separated, and that he was unable to extricate himself.

Charuvastra told detectives he did not treat Howden as a patient, had never examined her at his office and had no files on her. A lawyer for the Medical Board of California said it is considered unprofessional conduct, and grounds for possible disciplinary action, for a physician to prescribe medication without a “full, good-faith, prior examination.”

Police reports show that Charuvastra prescribed Prozac to Howden last January, after she contacted him and said she was depressed about her immigration status.

She had landed a one-line part on the TV sitcom “Dear John” the previous November--her first, legitimate acting role--and her lack of working papers caused a problem when it came time for Paramount Pictures to pay her, the show’s executive producer and casting director said.

Paramount officials refused to discuss how the matter was resolved. According to Howden’s mother and 28-year-old sister, J. Kyrra Howden of Vancouver, Paramount was threatening to contact the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

State medical officials also have confirmed that their case involves why Howden had the doctor’s gun, especially after he had prescribed her an antidepressant.

Charuvastra told police Howden stole the gun after breaking into his condo sometime last May. Detectives said the doctor’s story was corroborated by a damaged door frame at his home and by Kyrra Howden, who said her sister told her she had stolen the gun.

When asked by investigators why he did not report the weapon stolen, Charuvastra said he did not want to get Howden in trouble, according to police reports.

It was a routine brush with the law in the summer of 1990 that introduced Howden to Ronald William Webb, an 11-year CHP officer who patrolled West Los Angeles on motorcycle. He was 34 when he died last May 8 after he shot himself in the chest by the side of the San Diego Freeway in Van Nuys.

Howden was driving her sister to the airport when Webb pulled her over. Howden contested the traffic ticket--then began pursuing the dark-haired, blue-eyed Webb by repeatedly phoning him at the CHP’s West Los Angeles headquarters, said supervisor and friend Sgt. Harry Ingold.

Webb, a hard-working, well-liked patrolman, was separated from his wife and in the process of a divorce when he began dating Howden.

Webb knew Howden was a stripper and it bothered him, one CHP officer said. To Webb’s friends, Howden introduced herself as an actress. At the time, she seemed a good diversion for Webb, who friends said was deeply troubled by his failed marriage.

Kyrra Howden said her sister and Webb used to play a game called “foreplay” in which Webb would chase Howden on the freeway on his CHP motorcycle, lights flashing, and force her over to the shoulder as if to write a ticket. Then she would speed off, and the chase would begin anew.

But Howden’s importance in Webb’s life and death has become a matter of posthumous debate.

Los Angeles police have said Webb killed himself because Howden would not marry him. Indeed, Ingold and another officer said Webb had proposed to Howden the day before he died, although they did not know her response.

But Webb’s two friends also said they believed that his reasons for suicide were far more complicated.

Webb had been depressed and confused over several things, according to his friends and the autopsy report, most notably his divorce, his separation from his two young daughters and his health. He had been found to have muscular dystrophy and feared that the progressive disease would abort a career he loved.

“I honestly believe he was confused, very confused,” Ingold said.

Kyrra Howden said her sister loved Webb “terribly” and would have married him except that his divorce did not become final until last March, and Howden felt pressure to quickly deal with her immigration status.

She married Charles Allen House during a trip to Las Vegas last December with the understanding that as soon as she obtained working papers and cleared INS scrutiny they would divorce. They had met and become friends through Ex-Per-Tease, where the 40-year-old former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was a driver and often accompanied Howden to parties as a bodyguard and assistant. House also was a first cousin of Rebecca Harris, who owns the Mission Hills-based Ex-Per-Tease with her husband, Jeff Harris.

Born in Paducah, Ky., and raised in Los Angeles, House always “had a soft spot for people with problems,” his mother, Ann House, said. He also preferred small-town life and he and his family moved back to Kentucky in 1979, joining the Paducah Police Department, after a close friend in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was killed in the line of duty.

In 1985, House returned to Los Angeles, his first wife’s preference. He drifted--trying his hand at private security and real estate and joining Ex-Per-Tease before deciding to become an officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

House’s family insists that he regretted his marriage to Howden and spent as little time as possible at her apartment, where he slept on the living room couch. But Howden’s mother and sister say House was “desperately in love” with her.

Kyrra Howden claims she has a safety deposit box full of love letters House wrote to her sister, including one note she provided addressed to “My Sweet One.”

“I think I realized I loved you the first time you cried in front of me,” the undated note reads in part. “It was on the way to a party. . . . I cared so much for you that I wanted to hold you in my arms and assure you that everything would be OK.”

Howden’s family refutes the official version of the deaths--that an increasingly unstable Howden, distraught over Webb’s suicide, shot House before turning the gun on herself.

Instead, Howden’s mother and sister allege that House killed himself, prompting the already grieving Howden to take her own life in her Sherman Oaks apartment. They have hired a Torquay attorney to help them collect evidence and said they hope to reopen the case. Morgan and Kyrra Howden say Los Angeles police covered up House’s suicide as a favor to a fellow officer’s family.

Van Nuys homicide Detectives Paul Stewart and John Bagnall maintain that the evidence shows otherwise.

The only fingerprint found on the gun was Howden’s. She had many particles of gunpowder residue on her hands, as well as blood. House’s hands were virtually clean. She had been threatening suicide since Webb’s death. House was excelling at the Police Academy and looking forward to a vacation with his children.

However, Howden’s relatives note that Howden referred to House as a “true friend” in a suicide note. Her family also cites a phone call she made to the Harrises minutes before her death, in which she cried that House had just shot himself and she “could not take it anymore.”

The coroner’s opinion in Howden’s autopsy is ambiguous. “The detectives felt that the decedent may have shot her husband prior to shooting herself. The husband’s entrance wound and direction appear consistent with that being a self-inflicted gunshot wound as well.”

Ironically, House and Howden had passed an INS interview five days before their deaths and Howden’s application for permanent residency and working rights was approved.

But by then, Howden was nearing the end of a four-week emotional decline that began immediately after Webb’s death.

On May 9--a day after Webb’s body was found--Howden was detained by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies at Webb’s ex-wife’s house, where she was brandishing one of Webb’s old revolvers and threatening suicide. Police records show she was taken to the county’s mental health hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

According to the House children’s lawsuit, which names Ventura County as a defendant, Howden was released from the hospital within a few hours even though she legally could have been held up to 72 hours. State law gives doctors the discretion to release patients earlier. Webb’s friends said she later bragged that she was such a good actress she had convinced a county doctor she was stable enough to be released.

That same month she broke into Charuvastra’s home and took his gun.

Howden also began phoning Ingold at work, begging him to drive her to the site where Webb killed himself on the southbound side of the San Diego Freeway. “I wouldn’t do it,” Ingold said. “I didn’t think she was stable enough.”

Howden eventually found the spot and brought home bloodstained leaves as a memento, police records show. Detectives summoned to Howden’s apartment after her suicide found a plate of the leaves on a night table next to her bed, a copy of Webb’s suicide note in a photo album and one of his uniforms hanging in her closet.

“If I had done things differently, Ron never would of (sic) done this,” Howden wrote in her undated suicide note. “I now realize how much he really loved me. I know I’m a stubborn bitch sometimes and everybody thinks I’m made of iron, but even I have my limits. I don’t think I will ever be loved like the way he did me.”

Howden also asked to be buried with Webb in Hayward, a wish that was fulfilled.

The night she died, Howden had been drinking and taking tranquilizers, an extremely dangerous combination; her autopsy report shows that her blood-alcohol level was .16%, twice the legal driving limit of .08%. House’s blood-alcohol level was .03%, his autopsy showed.

About 11:30 p.m., they spoke with her mother in Torquay, who says now she can remember nothing that hinted at danger.

Three hours later, about 1:45 a.m., Howden called the Harrises in tears and said House had just shot himself. Jeff Harris tried keeping her on the phone while his wife called for help on another line, police reports show.

Howden hung up. Rebecca Harris called her back. Paramedics were arriving, and Harris told Howden to let them in. Howden hung up again, for the last time.

Paramedics pronounced her dead at 1:59 a.m.

House sat mortally wounded at the dining room table. Webb’s uniform was in Howden’s closet. Charuvastra’s gun was beside her on the bed.