Jury to Sort Out Sordid Details 9 Years After Woman’s Murder : Trial: The victim’s son-in-law is accused of arranging the slaying to cover up wrongdoing in a family business.

It is a case that showcases all the worst people have to offer--murder, greed, conspiracy, robbery, perjury, jealousy, cheating spouses.

Nine years after Catherine Stroup’s bullet-riddled body was found on the floor of her Hawthorne apartment, closing arguments in the case’s fourth criminal trial are expected to conclude today. Now it’s up to a Torrance Superior Court jury to sift through the sordid details, trying to figure out what really lead to Stroup’s death.

Even the attorneys don’t envy them the task.

One man already is serving a life sentence for the April 5, 1983, murder, and his brother has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for his involvement in the shooting. Now Stroup’s son-in-law, Michael W. Seawright, is on trial for allegedly hiring the two brothers--Peter and Paul Leach--to kill her.

The case has traveled a twisted road since Stroup’s husband, James, was arrested at the murder scene and erroneously charged with the crime. A jury cleared him, but only after he had spent seven months in jail awaiting trial.

It was not until a year after the killing that authorities found evidence that pointed in another direction. They turned up the murder weapon, a .22-caliber pistol that they later traced to the Leaches. The brothers eventually confessed to the shooting.

The Leaches have offered varying versions of what happened in Stroup’s apartment on the day of the murder. But both now say it was Seawright who put them up to it.

In his closing arguments this week, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Duarte told jurors that Seawright promised the Leach brothers a half-interest in a family water delivery business if they would kill his in-laws.

Two years before Catherine Stroup’s murder, James Stroup had agreed to bankroll a water delivery business in Twentynine Palms if Seawright would manage it. Stroup hoped one day to retire on his share of the profits from the business, but in the meantime he continued to work a graveyard shift at a Los Angeles dairy to pay for the water company’s start-up costs.

At first, Stroup believed Seawright’s explanation that truck repair costs for the company they named S & S Water Service were swallowing up most of the meager profits, Stroup testified during the trial.

But, shortly before she was killed, Catherine Stroup went to Twentynine Palms to go over the company books with her son-in-law and her daughter, Sherryl. She was infuriated by what she found, witnesses testified.

Stroup was killed before she could discuss the books in detail with her husband, Duarte said.

Duarte argued that Catherine Stroup suspected Seawright of skimming profits from the fledgling company. Alarmed by the confrontation with his mother-in-law, Seawright decided to offer his friend, Peter Leach, an interest in the water company if he would murder the Stroups, Duarte said.

To make the job easier, the prosecutor said, Seawright gave Peter Leach a gun that he had taken from the Stroups’ weekend home in Twentynine Palms, instructions on how to find the Rosecrans Avenue apartment where they lived during the week and detailed information about their work schedules.

At trial, Leach testified that Seawright believed that he and his wife would inherit S & S Water if the Stroups were killed.

Defense attorney Gerald Moriarty this week called the conspiracy theory “preposterous” and argued to jurors that Peter Leach concocted the tale to get back at Seawright for having an affair with his wife.

“It’s like a fantasy, a fairy tale from a mentally slow person, and that’s exactly what it is,” Moriarty said. “It’s bizarre.”

Seawright not only lacked a motive to kill his in-laws, but had good reason to want them alive and working, Moriarty argued.

“The business was started on a shoestring by James Stroup . . . and he was the one who continued to provide money to keep it going,” Moriarty said. “It would be utterly stupid for (Seawright) to kill off his capital, the people who are providing his backing.”

Instead, Moriarty argued, Catherine Stroup died in a bungled robbery when the Leach brothers went to her apartment looking for the $2,000 cash that they had heard the Stroups kept there.

Noting that both Leach brothers repeatedly changed their stories in the years following Catherine Stroup’s death, Moriarty urged jurors not to trust their testimony.

“I don’t think they’re the kind of people we ought to be trusting when we decide the guilt or innocence of a man,” he said.

Jurors will begin deliberating the case either today or Friday.