Dangerous Liaison : A Lonely Man Went Looking for Love in a Town Where Trouble Might Be Easier to Find

Philippe Marcelis remembers that the first warning came from his cats, Tiffany and Vagabond.

The instant the remote-controlled garage door sprang open, they dashed outside as if their tails were on fire.

They zoomed by Marcelis, who was returning home in his white, two-seat 1987 Mercedes after another long day at his upscale Santa Monica restaurant.

While the cats rocketed into the night, a flicker of concern tickled Marcelis’ brain.

He ignored it. Who knows why cats do anything?

He rolled into the garage, got out of the car. Immediately, the smell of cigarettes assaulted his nose.

Later, he realized this was the second warning. But at the time he thought the odor came from his clothes.

Marcelis, a chef, had spent most of the evening in a cloud of tobacco exhalations generated by friends visiting from his native Belgium.

The third--and final--warning was the most ominous. The deadbolt on the door between the garage and the living room was unlocked. Marcelis always locked that door.

But by then it was too late.

At that moment, the automatic light in the garage went out . . .

In those milliseconds of darkness Sept. 18, Marcelis was suspended between his former safe, busy, predictable life and a long waking nightmare.

The compactly built 50-year-old was about to plunge into a Los Angeles horror story sparked by his own loneliness.

In the next few minutes, Marcelis was shot at, robbed, punched and hogtied.

In the next few hours, his stolen Mercedes, proud symbol of success in his adopted country, was wrecked in a police pursuit.

In the weeks to come, he received death threats on the phone and in a letter pushed under his door.

A prowler set off the sensitive motion detectors in the elaborate home alarm system he installed after his initial ordeal.

Months later, Marcelis still is sleeping badly, still seeing a doctor for acute anxiety. He had lost 17 pounds but regained seven. His house was broken into again.

The criminal justice system adds to his frustrations.

The trial of the only suspect arrested has repeatedly been rescheduled. Each disappointing trip to court etches new strains on Marcelis’ face.

In the crowded hallways of the Santa Monica courthouse, he wonders aloud why crime victims seem doomed to wander alone in the judicial wilderness.

And it all has happened because Marcelis went looking for love in a town where danger might be easier to find.

Marcelis’ descent into living Purgatory began last August when he placed a personal ad. As a result, he met Patricia Davis, the mystery woman in the case, a woman whose acquaintances included a career criminal with a string of convictions for armed robbery.

From that simple set of facts is suspended a tangled web of improbable circumstances and bizarre events.

To say the least, Marcelis was the victim of an extraordinary crime, his first such experience in 24 years in this country. Robbery and attempted murder prompted by a want ad are so rare that the prosecutor in the case, Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Danette Meyers, believes it is “unique.”

Meyers adds that Marcelis’ reaction to the crime also is unusual, noting that he has bombarded her and police with suggestions about how to handle the case. Marcelis is “unlike any other victim” she has ever dealt with, she explains.

“It’s almost like a vendetta with him,” the prosecutor says, explaining that Marcelis has pursued his own investigation and occasionally seems “a little overzealous.”

Others also have seen the transformation in Marcelis. “He’s more hyper, he’s more aware. He seems to be a little bit shorter temperwise. He’s quicker to react. He’s obsessed with getting this thing finished,” says Graydon Klee, a friend of about 10 years.

Much of the story--assembled largely from court records and interviews with Marcelis--may never be entirely clear, even after the trial of the chief suspect, now set for Feb. 18.

For instance, Meyers says, it cannot be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt how Marcelis was targeted by three, possibly four, masked bandits. Davis was arrested and held briefly last November but has since been granted immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony, Meyers says.

Michael Darryl Brown--a four-time loser charged with attempted murder and first-degree robbery in the case--isn’t talking to authorities. A request by a reporter to interview Brown was declined by his attorney. Meanwhile, Davis, who also could not be reached for comment, has maintained in court records that she was forced to give Marcelis’ address to the criminals.

The chain reaction began because Marcelis was rebounding from the breakup of a four-year relationship, he says. Marcelis hoped the personal ad in The Times would help re-create that failed romance.

The ad read: “Dining, Fireplace, Good food, 1 on 1, attr. prof. SW European M seeks prof. attr. SBF 25-35, slim, non-smkg. Phone & photo.” A box number address followed.

Marcelis says he received about 15 replies to the ad, which ran four days. Earlier in the year, he had placed similar ads but had not met anyone compatible. He said he didn’t know any other way to meet women: He didn’t want to ask female customers out because he thought it was “unethical”--and he might wind up losing a customer. Also, he didn’t have much free time; he worked 80 to 90 hours a week at the restaurant, where he is chef-owner.

In early September, he received a telegram reply to the ad from Davis. The telegram, which contained a phone number, asked why he had not replied to her note and photo. Marcelis thought this was odd. For one thing, a telegram is an old-fashioned way to communicate. More importantly, he maintains he never received a photo from Davis.

He called her anyway.

They met at his restaurant, had dinner and went to his house, where they stayed for a short time before he took her home, he says. She told him she was the daughter of a Baptist minister and worked for a brother who was an attorney, he adds.

They agreed to meet again a couple of days later. But she stood him up, Marcelis says, leaving him sitting in front of her house in his Mercedes. While he waited, he saw a man go inside. After about 20 minutes, Marcelis says, he drove home, explaining that Davis had told him not to knock on the door but to wait until she saw him and came outside.

A few days later, he says, Davis called and apologized profusely, citing a death in the family. Marcelis decided to give her a second chance. Again they had dinner at the restaurant and went back to his house. As they were leaving, she asked to use the phone.

“Whoever she was talking to, she didn’t say the name or anything,” Marcelis recalls. “She said, ‘I know where it is now.’ I was standing maybe five or 10 feet from her, and I found that very, very strange and that stuck in my mind.”

That was the evening of Sept. 15.

Three nights later, the intruders struck.

It was a Wednesday, the restaurant’s busiest day, Marcelis had told Davis.

As he stood in his dark garage looking into the dining room, he saw a figure, silhouetted by a light left on in the house. Whoever he was, he was big.

Marcelis remembers flinching just as the man raised and fired a pistol. In his rapidly disintegrating innocence, Marcelis thought the attacker was firing blanks. Later, he calculated that the bullet had missed him by inches, maybe less. The Mercedes took the bullet instead--in the left rear fender.

Then the intruder rushed toward Marcelis. He “put the gun to my head and said, ‘If you say anything, if you do anything, we kill you.’ ”

The gun-toting assailant put his arm around Marcelis’ throat. Hoping he would be easily satisfied, Marcelis told the gunman his money was in his right pants pocket. A second, smaller person came and removed the money. They counted it quickly and were disappointed that it amounted to only $377. (It was Marcelis’ walking-around money, not the nightly take from the restaurant.) Then they threw Marcelis face down on the floor and the smaller person sat on him.

At some point, Marcelis says, he noticed there was a third person in the house. It was hard to tell much about any of them; they all wore ski masks and gloves. Possibly, there was a fourth person in the house too, Marcelis adds, explaining that from his vantage point on the floor he could not be sure. The intruders tied him up and shoved a sock in his mouth. At different times, Marcelis says, two of the criminals sat on him and one punched him on the side of the head. He is convinced that one of the people who sat on him was a woman.

A few minutes into the ordeal, one of the robbers told him they were going to put him in the Mercedes’ trunk. But when one of them tried to open the trunk, he found that the lock was jammed, a defect Marcelis had neglected to fix.

“You’re a lucky man,” the robber said.

All the while, two other Marcelis pets--Maltese dogs--ran around the house, barking out their distress. In the back yard, Marcelis’ two German shepherds added to the chorus. The barking made the criminals nervous. Marcelis says they hurriedly carried away several thousand dollars’ worth of household goods, including a TV, a camcorder, a .22 rifle, clothes, shoes and crystal glasses. None of the possessions has been recovered.

Later, Marcelis discovered that the thieves drank two small bottles of Scotch whiskey and a bottle of wine--although they missed the expensive vintages--as they waited for him to come home.

Finished with their looting, the assailants went into the garage, preparing to drive off in the Mercedes.

As they took his car, Marcelis saw that two of the intruders had taken off their ski masks. He says he recognized one as the man he had seen going into Davis’ house the night she stood him up.

After they left, Marcelis managed to quickly untie himself. He dashed outside, shouting for his neighbors to call the cops.

In the small hours that night, after the Los Angeles police had gone and Marcelis was by himself in the wreckage of his house, the telephone rang.

Marcelis thought he recognized the voice--it was one of the intruders. What followed, as Marcelis tells it, was a remarkable colloquy between criminals and victim:

“I complained about my wrist being cut (from the rope) . . . and they said, ‘We are hungry, that’s the way we have to eat. . . . and then he said he wanted to sell my car back to me for $500 . . . He said to me, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ ”

Marcelis spent the rest of the night elsewhere.

About 7 a.m. police called him to report that his car had been recovered and a suspect arrested, Marcelis says.

According to the testimony of Los Angeles Police Officer Stacy Lim during a hearing Nov. 8, Marcelis’ car was spotted about 3 a.m. Sept. 19 at the intersection of 97th Street and Vermont Avenue. According to court records, the Mercedes’ headlights were flashing and the horn was blaring as it passed Lim’s patrol car. (Marcelis says the horn and lights were activated by the car’s delayed alarm system.)

Officer Lim pursued the vehicle, which crashed into a parked car a few blocks away. The two men inside fled. Shortly thereafter, one was tracked down with police dogs and identified by Lim as one of the men in the car.

Later, Marcelis identified Michael Darryl Brown as one of the men who had been in his house and the man he says he saw entering Davis’ house. The other suspects remain at large and unidentified. (Marcelis was later sued by the owner of the parked car, although the case was dismissed. The Mercedes required $11,000 in repairs.)

Deputy Dist. Atty. Meyers will try to obtain a career criminal conviction against Brown, who has served time for four armed robbery convictions. If she’s successful, Brown, 30, could spend the rest of his life in prison, Meyers says.

Davis continues to assist authorities in the case against Brown, whom she has admitted dating. Beyond that, little more is known about her. According to court records, she told investigators she was coerced by Brown into giving him Marcelis’ address. She also reported that she had been threatened by Brown’s relatives if she testified against him.

Meyers says Davis, who has no criminal record, is a “strong,” credible witness whose testimony should be effective against Brown.

Because no other suspects have been caught and because Davis, the key witness against him, has been threatened, Meyers has asked for a courtroom with extra security when Brown’s trial begins later this month.

Since that night in September, Marcelis says--and Meyers confirms--he has received a series of threatening calls, presumably from the assailants. One letter, delivered to the restaurant, indicated “they would blow my house up, they would blow my business up, they would blow my car up and they would kill me,” he says.

Marcelis says he’s seen a man outside his restaurant he thinks has been staking the place out. He says his house was broken into Jan. 7, but the intruder was driven away by the burglar alarm.

Nowadays, Marcelis says he tells friends that, for their own safety, they should call first before they come by.

Although he still jokes and laughs easily, a frequent visitor notices an edgy, guarded tautness about Marcelis. He acknowledges that he has become hyper-alert, constantly watching the streets, checking out customers in the restaurant.

“I sleep better in the day than in the night,” he says one day to a visitor. On another day, standing by the bar in his restaurant, he tells the visitor, “I will never be the same again.”