O.C. Man Guilty of Murder in Trailer Tryst

A former Santa Ana tow-truck operator faces life in prison without parole after being convicted Monday of killing his best friend’s ex-wife in a case described by a judge as both “complex” and “bizarre.”

After two days of deliberations, an Orange County Superior Court jury found Neill F. Matzen, 37, guilty of first-degree murder in the November, 1990, beating death of Donna Jean Connaty, a 34-year-old Buena Park nurse.

The jury also found Matzen guilty of two special circumstances, lying in wait and murder for financial gain, meaning that he faces a sentence of life in prison without parole when he is sentenced April 10.

Matzen’s attorney said he plans to appeal the conviction.

Judge David O. Carter thanked jurors for their work on “a case that was both complex and somewhat bizarre.”

The jury foreman, Erwin Spitz, 45, of Laguna Hills, said the jurors were only able to come to two conclusions, “that Donna Connaty had been murdered and that Neill Matzen did the crime.”

During the trial, attorneys for both sides told a story of two troubled couples, a trailer-park tryst, murder for hire and betrayal.

“The whole case was difficult,” said another juror, Muriel Vancouvering of Brea.

Kathleen Jones, Donna Connaty’s mother, who sat through the trial, said after the verdict that she was “happy” about the jury’s decision.

But, she added tearfully, “it will never bring back Donna, and that still hurts too much. . . . In my heart I knew that if (jurors) listened to the evidence, they would find him guilty.”

Deputy Public Defender David C. Biggs, who had argued to the jury that Matzen’s wife, Cindy, probably committed the murder and instigated her husband’s subsequent confessions, said he was disappointed by the verdict.

“We wish that we would have been more successful in making our position persuasively,” said Biggs. “But given the state of the evidence, it is a verdict that is understandable.”

“I believe they convicted him on the evidence,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Patrick H. Donahue.

The prosecutor acknowledged to the jury that Cindy Matzen probably played a role in the killing of Donna Connaty and may have been in the house when the killing took place. Her role in the murder, Donahue said, is still under investigation.

Neill Matzen was accused of bludgeoning Donna Connaty with an iron bar at the request of Richard Connaty, her ex-husband, for $15,000 that he planned to get for refinancing his home.

Richard and Donna Connaty had a troubled marriage, according to court documents filed in connection with their divorce. Richard Connaty, 38, was abusive and violent to his wife, a nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, as well as to the couple’s three children. During the Connatys’ 18-month separation, Richard Connaty stayed at the Coach Royal Mobile Home Park in Santa Ana, where he became friendly with the Matzens.

For 14 months before Donna Connaty’s murder, Richard Connaty had been having an affair with Matzen’s wife, Cindy, according to a statement Cindy Matzen gave to police. She said she sometimes met Richard Connaty for sex at the family trailer while her husband was at work.

In that statement and others, Cindy Matzen implicated her husband in the murder of Donna Connaty, saying that she had dropped him off and picked him up the morning of the killing at the Buena Park tract house the Connatys had shared during their marriage. She gave police a detailed account of the beating, which she said she got from her husband, and told police that they might find her fingerprints on the murder weapon because she had moved it during an earlier visit to the house.

On the advice of her attorney, Cindy Matzen refused to testify during the trial, citing her Fifth Amendment privilege, but her video- and audio-taped statements to police were admitted as evidence.

On Dec. 4, 1990, nine days after Donna Connaty’s battered body was found, Richard Connaty burst into the Matzen family trailer, brandishing a .380-caliber handgun. He fired once at Neill Matzen, hitting him in the left shoulder, before his semiautomatic weapon jammed. Cindy Matzen, who was lying next to her husband in bed, dived for cover.

Neill Matzen then grabbed his own weapon, a .357 magnum handgun, and chased Connaty out of the trailer. When Connaty turned and tried to fire again, Neill Matzen shot him in the abdomen. With both men wounded, Cindy Matzen ran to Richard Connaty’s side.

The district attorney’s office later ruled that Richard Connaty’s death was the result of self-defense by Neill Matzen.

Matzen was held briefly by police for questioning in the killing of Donna Connaty but released for lack of evidence. He then fled to the desert, 90 miles east of Indio.

From the desert, Matzen mailed a number of letters, including one to police, one to a local newspaper and one to his wife, admitting that he killed Donna Connaty at the request of Richard Connaty. He wrote that Connaty, fearing that he might lose his home and custody of his three children, “was dropping hints of doing away with his wife. . . . Then he dropped the bomb. He told me that he was going to refinance his house to do remodeling and, if his problem was solved before December, he would pay me $15,000.”

Richard Connaty, Matzen wrote, also told him where the metal bar used to kill Donna Connaty would be and where and when she would be alone in the house.

Matzen wrote that he killed Richard Connaty in part because Connaty refused to end his affair with Cindy Matzen. On one occasion, Neill Matzen wrote, he had observed his wife and Richard Connaty having sex in Connaty’s truck, which was parked outside the Connaty house, an incident that Cindy Matzen denied ever took place.

In several of the letters mailed from the desert, Neill Matzen said he intended to kill himself. However, he was captured by police Dec. 14, 1990, in a shed in Fontana after abandoning his car and hitchhiking through Riverside County.

Matzen’s letters were admitted as evidence in the murder trial over vigorous objections by the defense, which argued that they had been dictated by Cindy Matzen and written in hopes of protecting his wife and keeping their daughter from state custody.

The Matzen Case

Events leading up to the first-degree murder conviction of Neill F. Matzen:

* Nov. 24, 1990: After completing her night shift at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, Donna J. Connaty, 34, is beaten to death in the Buena Park tract house she once shared with her husband.

* Dec. 4, 1990: Connaty’s ex-husband, Richard, a 38-year-old diesel mechanic, is shot to death by his friend, Matzen, in the Royal Coach Mobile Home Park in Santa Ana after Matzen is wounded by Connaty. Matzen is arrested that day in connection with the death of Donna Connaty, but released for lack of evidence. He flees to the desert east of Indio.

* Dec. 11, 1990: Buena Park police and others receive letters from Matzen, confessing to the slaying of Donna Connaty and saying he plans to commit suicide.

* Dec. 14, 1990: Matzen is arrested near Fontana.

* Feb. 24, 1992: Matzen is convicted of first-degree murder.