Suspect Was ‘Polite Guy’ at Golf Course : Murder: Public defender is assigned to represent Dana Point salesman held in shooting at marina.

The news of Bob Sherwood’s arrest on suspicion of murder last week shocked the regulars at San Clemente Municipal Golf Course, where he is a well-liked member of the men’s club.

Around the course, Sherwood is known as an unassuming guy and a better-than-average golfer who always wears a hat.

“He is just a quiet, polite guy,” said Tom Evans, who works as a starter in the pro shop at the popular public course at the southern end of the city. “He usually came in by himself a couple of times a week, put his name down and waited patiently for someone to play with.”

Last Friday night, however, Robert McLeod Sherwood, 42, was arrested at Dana Point Harbor and booked on suspicion of murder and using a firearm in the shooting death of Randy Lee DeVore, a well-known local sailor.

Sherwood, a Dana Point resident and a salesman, appeared in South Orange County Municipal Court briefly Tuesday, but his arraignment on murder and firearm charges was postponed until April 21 by Municipal Judge Ronald P. Kreber. A court-appointed public defender was assigned to represent Sherwood, who remains in Orange County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

According to documents filed in court Tuesday by the arresting sheriff’s deputies, Sherwood was found at the murder scene about 20 yards from the west side of the Dana Point Marina Co. about 11:30 p.m. and was handcuffed and taken into custody without incident. The body of DeVore, 41, an Irvine resident who owned a boat at the other end of the harbor, was lying face down in a pool of blood on a sidewalk nearby, bleeding from the head.

Police and witnesses said that DeVore had spent the evening hours with Marny Joan Sherwood, the suspect’s wife and a San Juan Capistrano city employee, on her 27-foot Catalina sailboat docked in the harbor. Robert Sherwood arrived about 10:15 p.m. Around that time a witness heard “what sounded like six or seven gunshots go off in rapid succession,” according to the report.

When deputies arrived, Robert Sherwood was standing next to the Dana Point Marina Co. drinking fountain on the west side of the building “with a blank look on his face,” the court documents said. Marny Sherwood was talking and crying “hysterically” on the adjacent pay telephone, they said.

The first person to arrive on the scene was John David Dahlberg, a marina employee. According to the court documents, Dahlberg told deputies that Marny Sherwood said to her husband: “Are you happy? He’s dead. You shot him.”

No weapons were found at the scene, the report said.

DeVore had two adult daughters and one granddaughter. All of them last saw him March 15 during a trip to the Los Angeles Zoo, according to one of the daughters, Melody DeVore, 18.

“We were all shocked, of course, when we learned about this,” she said. “It’s a totally useless thing, a total waste.”