Little in Con Man’s Long, Defiant Career Hinted of a Suicide

There was little in the long criminal career of Ronald Stanley Gerson that seemed to hint at suicide.

A smart-alecky, in-your-face kind of con man, Gerson casually walked out of the Van Nuys courthouse eight years ago on the day a jury convicted him of stealing a valuable Van Gogh painting. Later that day, he couldn’t resist calling the courthouse to find out what the verdict had been.

Gerson also couldn’t resist calling The Times to declare “the whole trial was a sham,” or, during his life on the lam, to phone his prosecutor each Christmas just to remind the deputy district attorney that he was alive and well.

In the end, it was those brief but defiant phone calls that led to Gerson’s undoing by prompting Deputy Dist. Atty. William A. Crisci to finally get some detectives on his trail full time after the case had fallen through the cracks.

But the notorious case that sometimes verged on the comic ended in tragedy Wednesday when Gerson, confronted by police at his Encino apartment, stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

“I take no delight in it,” Crisci said Thursday of Gerson’s suicide. “All I wanted him to do was serve his time that he was legitimately convicted for.”

Gerson, 45, probably would have served no more than half of his 13-year state prison sentence for the theft of “Pont Sur La Seine a Paris,” Crisci and Los Angeles police said. The 3-by-2-foot painting dated 1888 was valued between $300,000 and $800,000 when it was taken from the Holmby Hills mansion of developer Ernest Herman.

But though Gerson repeatedly vowed to never surrender, even his wife, Sandra Ekelman, did not take those threats seriously, police said.

Ekelman was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of writing four bad checks and embezzling $45,000 from a small film company where she had worked as a bookkeeper. According to Detective Robert Vanina, who found the couple, Ekelman “said something in jail to the effect of, ‘Gosh, he talked about this but I didn’t really think he’d do it.’ ”

Ekelman, 39, was released on $20,000 bail Thursday. She is scheduled for arraignment on the embezzlement charge June 2 in Van Nuys Municipal Court and on the check-writing charges June 3 in San Fernando Municipal Court.

Through persistence and a few lucky breaks, police traced the pair to the Newcastle Avenue apartment where Gerson died, said Vanina of the LAPD’s fugitives unit.

They had moved from one rented home to another in the West Valley, assumed the identities of friends and relatives and used fraudulently obtained credit cards to purchase necessities, including several hospital stays for the heavy-drinking Gerson, authorities said.

“He was definitely one of the better people we’ve come across at concealing his identity and hiding,” Vanina said. “He would constantly change his identity to stay one step ahead.”

Vanina’s biggest break came after Ekelman, using the alias “Francine Wiseman,” applied for a job with a small mail-order company in Chatsworth and a former co-worker recognized her.

“This person called her ‘Porter,’ and she ran out of the office,” Vanina said.

Her suspicions raised, the woman called their old employer, a bakery that investigators had already visited. Managers there alerted the detectives, who were able to get Ekelman’s most recent Encino address through her job application.

Neighbors described the pair on Thursday as a pleasant people who kept to themselves, hardly ever venturing out of the Spartan two-bedroom apartment during their two months there.

“I saw him once, but he hardly ever left the apartment,” said one tenant who refused to give his name.

But others recalled the couple--especially Gerson--as belligerent and prone to frightening rages.

Former landlords Sue Shatzkin and her husband, Martin Bronstein, said they became victims of a scheme by Gerson and Ekelman to live rent-free at their four-bedroom house on Valerio Street in Canoga Park.

Soon after the couple moved into the house in September, 1989, they said, Gerson called them and threatened to withhold rent for a year unless they gave him $1,200 in cash.

Over the next four months, as Shatzkin and Bronstein worked to evict the couple, Gerson left threatening, obscene messages on their answering machine and began tearing the house apart.

“There wasn’t a door in the house that wasn’t destroyed,” said Shatzkin. “He was explosive. You could follow his rage around the house.”

Gerson’s ex-wife, Lynda Bigelow, said “it was apparent that there was something terribly wrong with him” when she left him more than 15 years ago. The couple had a son and daughter together with whom Gerson had little contact.

“Ronnie seemed to go off the deep edge years, and years, and years ago,” said Bigelow, who now resides in the Phoenix area. “I think he was mentally ill.”

But during his arrest and trial for the Van Gogh theft, Gerson displayed a cool demeanor that won his captors’ grudging admiration.

He and his partner, John Louis Simms, now 53, stole the painting by posing as gas repairmen, working inside Herman’s mansion for several days while they waited for the right moment to escape with the Van Gogh and what turned out to be a worthless copy of a Monet.

When the painting was seized during a police sting operation at the Century Plaza Hotel--Gerson and his partners tried to exchange it for $120,000 in cash and 10 pounds of cocaine--Gerson nearly eluded arrest by hiding in the shower stall of a hotel room.

It was only when one officer, having already helped arrest Simms and three other suspects, went to use the bathroom that he heard a voice coming from the shower.

“My hands are up. Don’t shoot,” said an armed Gerson.

And although Gerson managed to escape from the courthouse during his trial, his defense attorney, Douglas Young, ended up in jail on a contempt-of-court charge.

“I’ve had this file on my desk since 1985,” said prosecutor Crisci, “and I knew that ultimately he would be caught.

“I mean, you can only be lucky so long.”