Officials Seize Possessions of Missing Priest

Ventura County investigators have searched the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles office and a self-storage locker, seizing bank papers, a switchblade and other possessions of a missing Simi Valley priest suspected of embezzling $43,000 from parishioners’ donations.

They also seized church collection envelopes, two stolen drivers’ licenses, an airline ticket to Mexico, a supply of cherry bombs and a handwritten note saying “cocaine addiction”--all taken originally from the church car and apartment used by Father David Piroli.

Piroli, 36, has been missing from St. Peter Claver Church since June 3, five days after Hollywood police found cocaine and $10,000 in his church car and arrested him on suspicion of drug possession and embezzlement.

Piroli told Hollywood police the $10,000 was six years worth of stipends the church paid him for saying Mass, according to court records. The cocaine belonged to someone else, he told them.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office dropped the drug charge because there was not enough cocaine to warrant prosecution, and dropped the embezzlement charge because the Simi Valley church was out of the office’s jurisdiction, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Norm Shapiro.

Several days later, after Piroli disappeared, church employees searched his church apartment and found $50,000 more--some in collection envelopes and all in small bills or checks written to the church.

Archdiocese officials removed Piroli from his post after he failed to return to his job. They have appointed a successor, Father Dennis Mongrain, who will start on Aug. 1.

On July 10, a Ventura County judge issued a warrant for Piroli’s arrest on suspicion of embezzlement.

Last week, Piroli phoned investigators once and church officials several times, but he refuses to surrender, said Auxiliary Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann.

Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary C. Peace said Wednesday that she hopes the bank documents--including numerous bank books and checks issued to Piroli--will help her piece together the case against him.

As for what the final picture will show, Peace said, “I would like to go through the paperwork and see. In this kind of case, until you know how the money’s coming and going, you don’t know.”

Archdiocese officials have been cooperating with the investigation, said Peace, who added, “I would like us to find him soon.”

“He has been in communication with us by phone,” Ziemann said Tuesday. “My response to his calls is to urge him to be cooperative with the Ventura district attorney, and to let him know that we love him and . . . want to help him.”

Among the seizures last week were church records that appear to show that collections from parishioners fell off by about $43,000 a year since 1990, when Piroli was assigned there, according to the return of the search warrant.

Church officials believe that Piroli embezzled that money from St. Peter Claver Church, the return said.

Armed with search warrants, investigators recovered material from Piroli’s church car that Hollywood police had turned over to the archdiocese chancery office in Los Angeles after the charges against the priest were dropped.

Investigators also took bank papers and other items from a self-storage locker in Simi Valley where the archdiocese had stored Piroli’s belongings last month after emptying out his church apartment.

The seizures included tax documents, savings account passbooks and bank statements belonging to Piroli, as well as a Mexicana airlines ticket issued to someone named Josue Palacios. The ticket holder shared a last name with Israel Palacios, the man who was released without being charged by Hollywood police, who found him in the car at the time of Piroli’s arrest.

Investigators also seized drivers’ licenses apparently taken from a San Fernando Valley woman last year during a mugging. The licenses had been issued to David Sydney Foster and Margaret Lutwen, court records said.

Dr. David S. Foster, a West Hollywood chiropractor, said that his girlfriend, Margaret Lutwen, was mugged in Tarzana nine months ago by four black men. Piroli is white.

The men took Lutwen’s purse, which contained her license and an expired license of Foster’s that she kept for the picture, Foster said Wednesday.

Foster said he did not know how Piroli got control of the licenses, but said, “Somebody involved with the mugging obviously got away and he might have sold that to somebody as fake ID.”

Peace, the prosecutor, said she does not know what the licenses mean.

As for the black-handled switchblade knife and the cherry bombs, Peace said, “It’s a mystery. . . . I can’t imagine why a priest would have those.”