Judge Dismisses Charges in $7.5-Million Fire

A judge has dismissed charges against a Burbank handyman accused of setting a fire that caused $7.5 million in damage to a building and the vast opera history collection it housed, including a first-edition Mozart score.

After a preliminary hearing, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Jon M. Mayeda ruled Thursday that prosecutors presented insufficient evidence of arson and commercial burglary against Phillip Towell, 34, a former handyman at the Burbank-based headquarters of the Ledler Corp., which was destroyed by flames in January, 1992.

“We were very fortunate to get a judge who had the courage to find there was insufficient evidence and dismiss the charges,” said Michael Abouaf, Towell’s attorney.

Abouaf called the state’s case circumstantial. Evidence included the fact that Towell owned a car similar to one seen pulling into a garage at the Ledler building before the fire started, and Towell’s knowledge of the building’s fire alarm system.

However, Towell, “. . . had no motive to do this,” Abouaf said. “The only thing he would have accomplished would be to burn himself out of his job.”

Towell, who had been free awaiting trial, has been unemployed since his arrest, Abouaf said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Mazur, the prosecutor, said the office has not decided if it will refile charges.

In an interview with The Times following her husband’s arrest in July, Towell’s wife, Cyndi, said her husband could not have started the fire because he was home watching television at the time. The couple have three children and are expecting a fourth.

The Ledler Corp., which once made and distributed Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer, was located inside a architecturally significant 20,000-square-foot aluminum-and-glass building on Magnolia Boulevard.

The building housed arts memorabilia, a first-edition score of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” and hundreds of other scores collected over decades by the founders of the company, Lloyd Rigler and the late Lawrence Deutsch.