Beaten Newsman Knew 1 of His Assailants : Crime: Police reports show that Gary Shepard was not the victim of a random attack by transients. One defendant says he spent the night at the TV reporter’s home.

At first, news of the savage beating and robbery of ABC newsman Gary Shepard in his isolated Malibu hills home early this month appeared to confirm Westsiders’ worst fears about the homeless.

The veteran correspondent, early accounts suggested, had been the victim of a random attack by a roving band of marauding transients who had ventured north from a base on the beach in Santa Monica.

But police and Sheriff’s Department reports obtained by The Times tell a different story.

The three men charged in the attack are not part of Santa Monica’s permanent, highly visible homeless population but in fact had come to Southern California only three weeks earlier. One is a Norwegian tourist whose vacation money ran out.

“The homeless are getting a bum rap in this case,” said attorney Joel Isaacson, who represents one of the defendants.

And with the bum rap come exacerbated fears and renewed calls for a crackdown, homeless experts say.

“A climate gets built out of a crime like this,” said Vivian Rothstein, executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica. “People hear the story and worry that gangs of transients are going to come and prey on them in their homes.”

Police reports indicate, however, that Shepard was not a random victim. Statements given by the suspects show that Shepard had met one of his assailants the previous weekend.

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 that night at Shepard’s Castlewood Drive home and went to the beach with him the next day.

The two men “socialized and smoked marijuana,” according to the report.

When Shepard drove Girou back to Santa Monica on Sunday, they had already made a date to meet at 5 p.m. a day later, Nov. 2, at a McDonald’s near the Santa Monica Pier. 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.

The plan, Girou and Charles Ray Hicks, 25, told police, was that as it grew dark, Girou would knock Shepard out and tie him up, then open the door to the others to steal the valuables he’d spotted on his first visit--the car, a laptop computer, a camera, binoculars, marijuana--which they would later try to sell.

What happened next depends on which defendant’s version is believed.

Girou told Santa Monica police Sgt. Ray Cooper that Hicks barged in and started beating Shepard with a fireplace poker, while he and a third man, Zoran Marjanovic, 20, looted the upstairs.

Hicks, however, told Cooper and sheriff’s Sgt. William Soltis that when he pushed Shepard’s door open about 8 p.m. that 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 Bombay gin from the bar. It broke on the sixth blow.

Shepard was found Tuesday afternoon by a neighbor whom an ABC colleague had called after failing to reach the newsman by phone. The neighbor found Shepard on his knees at the door, soaked in blood. He had managed to free his hands but his legs were still tied.

Shepard suffered a skull fracture, multiple stab wounds and severe bruises. Since his discharge from Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center on Nov. 8, he has been recuperating with relatives in another state, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss, who is prosecuting the case. Shepard is expected to recover.

Giss said Shepard is “lucid and ambulatory” despite brain damage that makes him temporarily unable to understand anything he reads. But Giss said he spoke last week with Shepard for 90 minutes, and that the veteran war correspondent has agreed to cooperate fully despite possible embarrassment about the circumstances surrounding the attack.

“He’s going to tell us all he’s capable of telling without concern for the consequences as to the public’s attitude,” Giss said.

However, Giss told Santa Monica Municipal Court Presiding Judge Laurence Rubin at a brief hearing last Wednesday that Shepard (his professional name; he is identified in police records as Gary August Schupp) has amnesia, which physicians hope is only temporary, and has been unable to identify his assailants from photographs.

“He doesn’t even remember the entire weekend,” Giss said.

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, Santa Monica police received a tip that several men were selling stolen goods in the 1600 block of Ocean Front Walk. An undercover officer sent to the scene, Phillip Sanchez, said in his report that Marjanovic told him that the items had been taken from a Malibu man.

According to the police report, Marjanovic boasted to Sanchez, “Once we started to hit the guy, he fell like a sack of s---.”

Police arrested five suspects after they led Sanchez to Shepard’s car parked nearby, which they offered to sell for $2,200. There was a strong clue that the vehicle was stolen: The car keys were attached to a chain and fob that read, “Gary Shepard, ABC News.”

Charged with attempted murder, first-degree residential robbery, first-degree residential burglary and grand theft auto are Girou, originally from Oklahoma; Hicks, originally from Mississippi; and Marjanovic, who lives in Trondheim, Norway. At the time of his arrest, Marjanovic, a Yugoslavian citizen who has lived in Norway since age 7, was misidentified because he was traveling on the passport of a friend, Tore Lerveck.

Hicks told police that he came here last month with Girou from Missouri, where he was released last year from prison after serving nearly five years on narcotics and assault charges.

Marjanovic has no criminal record, according to attorney Isaacson, who said he had checked with the Norwegian Embassy. But Marjanovic has also been charged here with burglarizing the room of two German tourists at the Belle Bleu Inn, a motel on Ocean Avenue, and with assaulting a homeless man.

He told his attorney that he had arrived with a $1,200 round-trip ticket from Norway and $800 in spending money and met the other defendants near the Santa Monica Pier a few days before the Shepard incident.

Giss said the arrested men told police that they had been camping out on the beach near Palisades Park, a hangout for Santa Monica’s transient population. “They were part of that milieu,” Giss said.

Police Chief James T. Butts said the Shepard case is a perfect example of his contention that the large number of homeless people in Santa Monica provide a cover for a criminal element. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said.

Butts said the defendants are suspects in a number of other robberies and hotel burglaries in Santa Monica.

A fourth suspect, identified only as an American Indian known as “Ron,” has not been found.

Two other defendants, Larry Dean Morris, 30, and Andrew Michael Winder, 22, both from New Jersey, face lesser charges stemming from the Shepard and Belle Bleu incidents.

All five men have pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Defense attorneys for the five, four of whom unsuccessfully fought to keep their clients from being photographed in court last week, want police reports on the case to remain sealed, primarily because they contain statements given after some of the suspects asked for--but were not yet assigned--a lawyer.

Deputy Public Defender Tom Burns, who represents Girou, has also asked that a preliminary hearing scheduled for Dec. 17 be closed to the public and the press, and even suggested that the judge exclude the press from a separate hearing to determine whether the press can be so barred. Rubin has not yet ruled on these matters.

Meanwhile, advocates for the homeless say they fear that the transient status of the Shepard suspects could lead to unfair generalizations about the homeless.

“They are such a convenient scapegoat for everything that’s going on,” said Rothstein of the Ocean Park Community Center. She said a premeditated attack such as the one depicted on Shepard in the police reports is beyond the capacity of most homeless people, many of whom she said are too damaged and destitute to plan such a crime.

Blaming the homeless offers a rationale to those who already want to sweep them out of town, said former Santa Monica City Atty. Robert M. Myers.

“Had it been five Catholics or five Jews who committed this crime, no one would have called for drastic action against Catholics and Jews,” Myers said.

“It’s much easier to take drastic action against the homeless if you demonize them as a group.”