TV Newsman’s Attack Wasn’t Random, Reports Show : Beating: Despite early accounts about a band of transients, Gary Shepard was assaulted by a youth he had befriended and some acquaintances, police documents say.

The savage beating of veteran ABC-TV newsman Gary Shepard this month was not a random attack by a roving band of homeless men but a robbery planned by a teen-ager whom Shepard had taken into his home, according to police reports.

Police reports, including statements by the defendants, say that the Nov. 2 attack on Shepard in his isolated home in the Malibu hills was set up by the teen-ager and three young men who had met shortly before while hanging out on the beach near the Santa Monica Pier.

Three of the alleged assailants are in custody after pleading not guilty to charges of attempted murder, burglary, robbery and auto theft. A fourth suspect has not been found.

Shepard suffered a fractured skull and multiple stab wounds after being hit repeatedly with a fireplace poker and a bottle of gin, police reports said. He is suffering from amnesia and may not be able to identify his attackers at a preliminary hearing set for Dec. 17 in Santa Monica Municipal Court.

According to police reports obtained by The Times, defendant John Girou, 18, told police that Shepard, 53, had driven up alongside him as he walked near Santa Monica Place on Oct. 31, a Saturday, and asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. Girou said he spent the night at Shepard’s Castlewood Drive home and went to the beach with him the next day.

The two men “socialized and smoked marijuana,” the reports say.

When Shepard drove Girou back to Santa Monica on Sunday, they had already agreed to meet at 5 p.m. the next day at a McDonald’s. But this time, when Girou climbed into Shepard’s red Toyota convertible, three of Girou’s newfound friends followed close behind in a borrowed Volkswagen van, according to the report.

Girou and co-defendant Charles Ray Hicks, 25, told police their plan was that as it grew dark Girou would knock Shepard out and tie him up, then open the door for the others to steal valuables he had seen on his first visit.

The defendants gave different versions of what happened next.

Girou told Santa Monica police that Hicks barged in and started beating Shepard with a fireplace poker while he and a third man, Zoran Marjanovic, 20, looted upstairs. The fourth suspect was identified as an American Indian named Ron.

Hicks, however, told police and Sheriff’s Department detectives that when he pushed Shepard’s door open about 8 p.m. Monday there was blood everywhere. He said he saw Girou strike Shepard in the forehead with a fireplace poker five times, then six times with a bottle of gin from the bar. It broke on the sixth blow.

A neighbor found Shepard the next day on his knees at the door, soaked in blood.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss said Shepard is “lucid and ambulatory” despite brain damage that makes him temporarily unable to understand anything he reads. But Giss said the veteran war correspondent has agreed to cooperate fully despite possible embarrassment about the circumstances surrounding the attack.

Three of the four suspects were arrested Nov. 4 after Santa Monica police received a tip that they were selling stolen goods near the beach. An undercover officer said in his report that Marjanovic told him the items had been taken from a Malibu man.

The suspects led police to Shepard’s nearby car, which they offered to sell for $2,200. The car keys were attached to a chain and fob that read: “Gary Shepard, ABC News.”

Hicks told police that he and Girou came to Los Angeles in October from Missouri, where Hicks had been released from prison last year. Marjanovic had come on vacation to Southern California from Norway about the same time. He has no criminal record, according to his attorney, Joel Isaacson. But Marjanovic has also been charged here with burglarizing the room of two German tourists at a Santa Monica motel and with assaulting a homeless man.

Early accounts of the beating, suggesting that Shepard had been the victim of a random attack by a roving band of transients who had ventured from the beach, fueled widespread sentiment among many Westside residents that Santa Monica’s large homeless population poses a threat.

However, the reports show that those charged in the attack are not part of the city’s highly visible homeless population but had come to Southern California only three weeks earlier.

“The homeless are getting a bum rap in this case,” Isaacson said.