Hood: Detective Partly at Fault in Slaying

James N. Hood, the 49-year-old Newport Beach developer accused of killing a former employee, sought Tuesday to shift some responsibility for the killing to a police detective.

Hood has testified that he shot Bruce E. Beauchamp in self defense, hitting him seven times during an armed confrontation. The confrontation was provoked by Beauchamp’s involvement in a burglary at Hood’s shopping center, Hood said.

However, prosecutors charge that Hood lured the 32-year-old construction worker to his death to prevent him from exposing Hood’s role in the murder of his wife.

Hood repeated Monday’s testimony that Detective Richard Brown advised him to buy a gun and to shoot Beauchamp if the disgruntled ex-employee ever returned to Hood’s shopping center, near Fontana. Brown, who sat in the courtroom Tuesday, has denied he gave such advice.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David Whitney asked Hood if he felt the officer should be blamed for the March, 1992, slaying of the construction worker. Hood replied that the detective’s advice was “not why it happened.”

But Hood then volunteered that if the detective had picked up Beauchamp--who was not wanted for any crime--before the shooting, “I wouldn’t be here today.”

Throughout the day, Whitney probed other aspects of Hood’s relationship with Beauchamp and his account of the shooting, as well as Hood’s financial status and his relationship with his 46-year-old wife, Bonnie Hood.

In March, 1991, Beauchamp was acquitted of murdering Bonnie Hood at Camp Nelson, the Sierra Nevada lodge the Hoods owned. In bed with her was the lodge’s caretaker, who was shot in the head, but survived. The caretaker, Rudy Manuel, identified Beauchamp as the killer, but the jury found him not guilty.

Jim Hood, who repeated Tuesday that he had no part in his wife’s killing, said, “I loved my wife very much.”

Whitney queried Hood in detail about his relationship with Beauchamp before Bonnie Hood’s death.

Hood acknowledged that he lied about his role in cutting down trees that were obscuring an electronic sign for his shopping center along Interstate 10. After Caltrans prohibited him from destroying the trees, Hood said, he paid Beauchamp to cut them down in the middle of the night.

Hood also acknowledged that he was part of an unemployment compensation scheme involving Beauchamp, wherein Hood and his partner paid Beauchamp under the table while claiming to fire him.

“I was worried about both of” these involvements with Beauchamp, Hood said. If Beauchamp exposed them to protect himself and his brother-in-law from charges related to the burglary at the shopping center, Hood said, “it would cause a great deal of aggravation.”