O.C. Killing Shatters Romanians

Zoia Ungureanu’s voice, once famous throughout her native Romania, had been virtually silent for more than a decade.

A celebrated pop and folk singer during the reign of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, she had been kept off the stage after emigrating to the United States in 1983 by a jealous husband and hard times. The woman who had once entertained Romanian television and nightclub audiences in seven languages worked here as a department store makeup artist.

With a turbulent marriage behind her, the 41-year-old performer was reviving her singing career and dreaming of opening a jazz club when her estranged husband, Lorel Ungureanu, gunned her down in a murder-suicide outside her home Jan. 28, friends and authorities said.

“She was so happy to be singing again,” said her 22-year-old niece, Margo Campeanu. “That’s what hurts her family the most, knowing that she was finally happy.”

The slaying came just after Zoia Ungureanu had triumphantly returned to the stage, performing recently in what she called “comeback concerts” with other Romanian immigrants in Fullerton and Hollywood, said Aristide Buhoiu, editor and publisher of Universul, a Romanian-language newspaper based in Los Angeles.

While even the woman’s closest neighbors in the condominium complex knew little about her background, the singer’s death was front page news in her native Romania--where she was known as Zoia Campeanu--and to the community of 120,000 Romanian expatriates who live in Southern California.

“I think people had wondered what had happened to her,” said Buhoiu, who attended her recent performances along with hundreds of other Romanian immigrants. Her husband “was very jealous,” Buhoiu said. “She got very isolated in Orange County because of her husband. But she was so happy to be up there on the stage again that she would not accept any money for the performances. And she performed great. She was still so very good.”

As a co-worker watched, Lorel Ungureanu shot his estranged wife twice at close range in the parking lot outside her condominium, hitting her in the face and torso before turning the handgun on himself, police said.

Zoia Ungureanu “was walking around to get in my car when she saw him,” said Tina Browning, who had arrived just minutes before the shooting to take her friend to dinner. “They talked for a few minutes, then she turned away quickly and walked to my car. I opened the door for her. Then he walked very fast behind her (and) said, ‘Zoia!’ She turned around and he shot her and shot her again.”

Friends and family said this week that Zoia Ungureanu left her husband three months ago after eight years of an often turbulent marriage. Lorel Ungureanu often threatened his wife and verbally abused her, they said, keeping her from her first love, singing, out of jealousy.

Later, after Lorel Ungureanu’s business went sour, his wife was forced to support the family as a cosmetologist.

After the couple separated, Lorel Ungureanu’s life appeared to be falling apart, friends and family said. He was facing hard times financially, had been sued by his former business partner and was distraught over the prospect of losing his wife, they said.

“There were so many problems around him,” said Sebastian Pereanu, a longtime friend who emigrated to the United States with Lorel Ungureanu 20 years ago. “The last time I spoke to him, he was very depressed.”

News of the shootings quickly spread throughout Southern California’s Romanian immigrants, many of whom live in Los Angeles. Zoia Ungureanu’s parents in Chicago received hundreds of telephone calls from friends and admirers they had never met, Margo Campeanu said.

“People are very, very upset, believe me,” said Michael Istrate, owner of Mignon, the oldest Romanian restaurant in Los Angeles and a regular gathering place for expatriate Romanians.

The couple, who met at a beauty trade show in Chicago in 1986, were married that year at Istrate’s restaurant before more than 150 guests.

“It was just the happiest day,” Istrate recalled. “The restaurant was full of people and Zoia sang for everyone. Everything was beautiful.”

At that time, Lorel Ungureanu was a successful businessman and a partner in Venice Trading Co. Inc., which manufactured furniture and equipment used in beauty salons.

But he and his partner in the company, Claudio Bonazza, had a bitter business dispute in 1989 which resulted in Lorel Ungureanu selling his 50% interest in the company to Bonazza, according to court records.

“He had been very rich. . . . But he went from having several Mercedes and houses to nothing,” Buhoiu said.

At the time of their deaths, Lorel and Zoia Ungureanu were being sued by Bonazza for allegedly producing and marketing equipment that was “confusingly similar” to Bonazza’s products, the lawsuit claims.

Bonazza declined to discuss his former business partner or the lawsuit, which is pending in Orange County Superior Court.

By all accounts, Zoia Ungureanu had tried to remain on friendly terms with her husband after their November separation. She spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve with him and his two young sons from a previous marriage. Zoia Ungureanu had helped raise the boys, ages 13 and 14, who are now living with their mother.

“My aunt’s biggest mistake was that she kept in touch when she left,” Margo Campeanu said. “I think she was so scared that she wanted to be polite and diplomatic and tried to end things in a nice way. But he was so miserable and realized she wasn’t coming back. He was penniless and had lost everything.”

At the time of her death, Zoia Ungureanu was employed by Shiseido Cosmetics as a makeup artist at Nordstrom’s in the Brea Mall, Browning said.

“She was afraid that something would happen,” Browning said. “She would come to work and tell me that she was scared. That night, she sounded depressed and I told her that I was taking her to dinner. When I arrived to pick her up, she looked absolutely beautiful, as always. I compared her to Ivana Trump.”

Browning said that as the pair walked to her car shortly after 8 p.m., Lorel Ungureanu drove up to the condominium complex in the 800 block of Springwood Street. After the shooting, as Zoia Ungureanu lay on the asphalt of the complex’s parking lot, Browning said she drove away in panic to call police. She said she did not see Lorel Ungureanu shoot himself.

The couple were married two years after Ungureanu divorced his first wife, Linda Jean Cox, the mother of his two sons. Cox, too, had contended that Lorel Ungureanu was abusive. In court papers Cox filed at the time of the couple’s separation, she claimed he beat, pushed and kicked her in the presence of their children.

Ungureanu has “a very violent and uncontrollable temper. He flares up at the slightest incident and goes crazy with rage,” Cox declared in court records. She claimed Ungureanu vowed to kill her if she ever complained to police or anyone else.

But the courts and Orange police have no record of Zoia Ungureanu taking legal action to keep her husband away from her. Police “had no indication that she was fearful of him or that there was any domestic violence prior (to the shooting),” said Lt. Timm Browne. “There wasn’t anything that would lead us to believe that this would be the outcome.”

Times staff writers Lynn Franey and Rene Lynch contributed to this report.