Judge Won’t Reduce Bail in Carlsbad Slaying

Defense attorneys, relatives and even an assistant U.S. Attorney failed Friday to win a reduction in the $1-million bail set for a 28-year-old doctor charged in the chloroform killing of his traveling companion at a Carlsbad motel last August.

Vista Municipal Judge Michael Burley ruled that while he believed the physician would keep his court appearances, there was “a small likelihood he would not,” and ordered the bail to remain at $1 million--an amount clearly out of reach of his family’s financial resources.

The family of Dr. Sam Dubria had offered to stake all their personal real estate, valued at nearly $1 million, as collateral to back a $500,000 bail bond. The family had made the same offer previously, before a different judge.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly argued that Dubria might still be willing to flee the country to escape prosecution--even if it meant he would leave his own family homeless.

Casserly noted that Dubria might be charged with special circumstances leading to the death penalty, because he allegedly killed 20-year-old Jennifer Klapper in the commission of a rape and because death was by poisoning--chloroform that the doctor allegedly administered to knock her unconscious.

Burley noted that if Dubria is found guilty of murder, it would necessarily be in the first degree--even without prior-intent--because she was killed n connection with rape and poisoning. Dubria had talked Klapper, a good acquaintance at a hospital where the two worked in Cincinnati, into accompanying him on a summer vacation to California, first to visit his family and hometown of Glendale, then on a side-trip to Tijuana. Klapper agreed on the condition that the trip be platonic, her family said.

The district attorney’s office alleges that en route to Tijuana, the couple stopped at a Carlsbad motel where Dubria tried to knock Klapper unconscious with chloroform so he could rape her. Instead, she never regained consciousness, and the San Diego County medical examiner’s office said she died of chloroform poisoning. At the time, Dubria claimed that Klapper inexplicably went into respiratory arrest.

Among the defense arguments for lower bail on Friday was that Dubria had strong family support. To that issue, George Newhouse--who is deputy chief of the U.S. Attorney’s public corruption and government fraud unit in Los Angeles and for whom Dubria’s mother works as a secretary--told Burley he had the utmost faith in Lourdes Dubria’s ability to keep tabs on her son.

Answered Casserly, “The defendant comes from a fine family, and that’s all good and well. But he did this thing, and the fact he came from a fine family isn’t particularly relevant.”

Dubria’s preliminary hearing was scheduled for March 17.