Avocado Grove Murders Still a Mystery : * Crime: Police have no suspects and no motive after finding bodies of two men in an abandoned truck.

The execution-style murders of two men whose bodies were found last weekend in a Duarte avocado grove remain a mystery--with no suspects, and no motive determined.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators, family members of one of the victims and those who live in the quiet neighborhood where the bodies were found say they are bewildered by the deaths of Daniel J. Chapman, 28, of Seattle, and Keith C. Thomas, 30, of Los Angeles.

The men were found shot to death in the back of a Ford Explorer hatchback truck that had been abandoned in an avocado grove near Las Lomas Road and Sunnydale Drive, authorities said.

A caretaker walking through the overgrown grove at 2:30 p.m. Saturday found the truck partially hidden under a tree.

Inside, Chapman and Thomas were lying face down. Each had been shot once in the head, and their hands were bound and handcuffed behind them. Authorities believe the bodies had been in the truck at least a day before they were discovered.

The shooting does not bear the marks of a drug deal gone bad, nor of a spontaneous, gang-shooting, Sheriff’s homicide Lt. Frank Merriman said.

“We don’t know why they died, other than they made somebody very angry,” Merriman said. “There was a little effort put into this (killing). . . .

“This was different. It was more of an execution than anything else.”

But Lisa Chapman, 25, the sister of one of the dead men, said her brother had no enemies, and the family has no idea who killed the two men.

“To know him was to love him,” she said of her brother Tuesday evening as relatives gathered in the family home near Slauson Avenue and Wilton Place, where the victims grew up, in Los Angeles.

“Danny had a sense of humor, like Rodney Dangerfield,” she said. “We don’t understand. We’re hoping somebody’s going to walk up and tell us something.”

Thomas, the other slain man, was a longtime friend from the neighborhood, Lisa Chapman said. His relatives could not be reached.

The neighborhood is a peaceful-looking one of stucco houses. Churches line Western Avenue, five blocks away. But a local gang dominates nearby 60th Street, and drug dealing is common, Merriman said.

Chapman avoided such activity, his relatives said. A married man with four sons, Chapman served in the Navy, they said. He had no criminal record, according to state authorities.

Chapman recently moved to Seattle and had come back to visit his mother and finish other moving arrangements, family members said.

They said Chapman worked various jobs. Merriman said he believed Chapman was unemployed.

“Danny always kept everybody laughing. He wasn’t violent. He was good to everybody,” she said. “That’s why it’s a shock.”

The deaths also shocked those living below the avocado grove in Rancho Duarte--a 10-year-old neighborhood of $250,000 homes at the base of the San Gabriel Mountain foothills.

“A lot of times, kids take a shortcut to school through the orchard,” area resident Jeff Johnson said.

Linda Attalla, whose family owns 40 acres, including the avocado grove, recalled hearing two gunshots last Thursday afternoon. But such sounds are common, she said, what with a nearby shooting range and deer poachers in the foothills.

Early Saturday morning, Attalla said, she heard “something wild and crazy” in the grove. Neighbors later told her that they saw seven or eight motorcyclists there about 1 a.m. Saturday.

Merriman said investigators plan to check those reports.

They will also travel to Washington state, the lieutenant said. The truck was rented in Seattle, so detectives will attempt to find out if the killer or killers accompanied Chapman from there, or met up with the victims here, he said.

Investigators also were puzzling over how the killer or killers found the relatively isolated grove, hidden in back of a residential neighborhood.

Another area resident said the stand of thick trees with its overgrown paths attract trespassers who ignore posted private-property signs.

“Sometimes there’s a lot of commotion in there,” said the resident, who asked that she not to be named. But, she said, the murders are the worst thing that has happened.

“We all talked about it, and I didn’t sleep much, thinking of what had gone on during the week in there,” she said.

“Like they say, no matter what, they’re somebody’s children,” she said of the victims. “And you feel bad, because someone’s hurting.”