NEWPORT BEACH : Developer Charged With Man’s Murder

A Newport Beach developer fatally shot a former employee, then planted a gun on the body to make the shooting look like it occurred in self-defense, a prosecutor said Friday.

James Newman Hood is charged with murder in Monday’s shooting death of Bruce Beauchamp, 32, of Fontana. Beauchamp was acquitted last year in the killing of Hood’s wife, Bonnie Jean Hood.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Clark A. Hansen in San Bernardino County said investigators found two handguns, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic and a .357 magnum, in James Hood’s office in Mission Plaza shopping center near Fontana on Monday morning after the shooting. The 9-millimeter was registered to Hood. The unregistered .357 magnum was found on Beauchamp’s body, Hansen said.

Hood told authorities that the .357 magnum belonged to Beauchamp, Hansen said, but the prosecutor alleged otherwise.

“The second gun was planted on the victim by Mr. Hood,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Hood, 48, who was arraigned Thursday in Municipal Court in Fontana, was being held without bail in West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.

According to Hansen, Hood received $3 million in insurance money after the shooting death of his wife in August, 1990, at Camp Nelson Lodge in the southern Sierra. The Hoods owned the lodge. Hansen said $1 million came from Bonnie Hood’s life insurance policy and the rest came from a mortgage insurance policy on the lodge.

Beauchamp was tried for the murder of Bonnie Hood but was acquitted last March by a Tulare County jury. He had testified that he was at the lodge but left before she was killed.

Meanwhile, a bail hearing will be held for Hood on Monday in Municipal Court in Fontana. Hansen said the defendant owns properties in Orange and San Bernardino counties totaling about $10 million.