Despite a Murder, Lifestyle Insulates Bradbury Residents

Tiny, exclusive Bradbury--population 833--logged a murder over the weekend, only the third in the city’s 35-year existence.

Dr. Agnes Larson Kulcsar, a 44-year-old psychiatrist, was found dead Saturday night. Her body, strangled and slashed with a razor, had been stuffed into a trash can in the back yard of the family home on Mt. Olive Lane.

Sheriff’s investigators and the district attorney say Kulcsar was killed by her unemployed husband, Corwin Larson, 45, who pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Santa Anita Municipal Court to one count of murder. A preliminary hearing was set for Wednesday.

The couple’s 11-year-old daughter, Ixka, was out of the country at a summer camp.

Prosecutors say the murder was the result of a domestic squabble after Kulcsar had spent a night away from home to avoid a confrontation with her husband, a former patient.

Elizabeth Paris-Benyo, Kulcsar’s sister, was in another part of the house with another relative at the time of the killing. They heard an argument and left the house. Paris-Benyo said the psychiatrist’s husband had a history of mental problems.

“I think he didn’t take his medication and went out of control,” she said. “I would like to believe he didn’t realize what he was doing.”

For Bradbury residents, who prize their privacy, horses and rural foothills lifestyle in homes valued at up to $6 million, Kulcsar’s death caused only a tiny ripple. Residents and city officials said they did not know the couple.

Zoning laws require many homes to be on at least two acres. Tall fences and gates usually separate them.

“It’s not like you have a next-door neighbor where you can run next door and get a cup of flour,” City Councilwoman Audrey Chamberlain said.

Four years ago, sheriff’s detectives entered this private domain to investigate the deaths of auto racing promoter Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy, who were ambushed outside their home by two bicycle-riding assailants. That case remains unsolved.

Late Saturday, sheriff’s investigators went to Bradbury again. Kulcsar’s sister and another relative had called after hearing the couple quarrel, seeing blood in the home and spotting Larson standing near the garbage cans, a deputy district attorney said.

Investigators said the couple had recently moved from Altadena. Although not well known in her new community, Agnes Larson Kulcsar enjoyed a reputation as a teacher and psychiatric researcher whose articles were published in professional journals.

Raised in Hungary, Kulcsar graduated from medical school in Budapest and moved to Switzerland with her sister in 1972, Paris-Benyo said. In 1977, the women moved to this country and Kulcsar began a psychiatric residency in Phoenix. She met Larson, a gift shop owner, in Tucson, Paris-Benyo said.

During most of the couple’s 13-year marriage, the husband was unemployed, Paris-Benyo said. But Kulcsar, who kept her maiden name for professional reasons, continued to advance. She trained in child psychiatry at the USC School of Medicine, taught at the medical school, started a private practice in South Pasadena and in April became chief of the adolescent ward at County-USC Medical Center Psychiatric Hospital, USC officials said.

“She was very much respected by all her colleagues and she was the nicest person you could imagine,” her sister said. Despite Kulcsar’s busy schedule, “her life was her child, everything was for her child.”