Mystery Surrounds Missing Man : Investigation: James Young, 73, of Quartz Hill disappeared 13 months ago. Detectives are now looking at the case as a possible murder.

Thirteen months ago, 73-year-old James Young went to Las Vegas for what was to be a short getaway and he still hasn’t come home.

Friends and neighbors feared for months that Young met with foul play. And it appears those fears are finally being taken seriously--the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau began investigating Young’s disappearance earlier this month as a possible murder.

There have been no charges filed and homicide detectives say they are facing what they expect will be a long investigation. When Young was first reported missing, detectives from that bureau interviewed neighbors and a man named Michael Benanti, a 35-year-old landscaper and ex-convict who had moved into Young’s spacious Quartz Hill home shortly after Young’s disappearance.

Benanti, who said he was Young’s business partner, told a missing persons investigator that Young had met a woman named Rosie, married her and moved to Mexico--leaving him in charge of his business affairs.

Detectives spent Friday sifting through Young’s home and personal records.

Making their job that much harder is the man at the center of the mystery: Young was a complicated person who led an eccentric life.

He drove a Porsche whose license plate letters stood for Greek God--symbolic of his belief that he was the consummate ladies’ man, even though friends say they never saw him do anything more than talk about women.

His huge back yard resembled a junk yard, littered with machinery he bought at auctions and the many cars and trucks he owned.

Fritz and Trixie, his two Rottweilers, shared his water bed with him at night. Friends say he loved the ferocious-looking dogs like the children he never had.

Above all else, Young was a penny-pinching, cantankerous old man who got along best with those who yelled back as he cursed them.

“He was a pain in the ass,” said friend Cindy McEuen of Lancaster.

Now, the Porsche and its vanity plates are gone. Much of the back yard’s contents are missing. Fritz and Trixie, who were left unattended when Young went to Las Vegas, are nowhere to be found. And neither is Young.

On Feb. 2, more than a year after his disappearance and 12 months after a friend reported him missing, Young’s case was moved from missing persons to the homicide bureau because of the “suspicious circumstances,” said Detective Michael Scott of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau.

“Mr. Young just fell off the face of the Earth,” the detective said. Young’s bank accounts have sat idle for more than a year; there’s no evidence he’s received medical care in either California or Nevada, and all other paths of inquiry to find Young alive have led nowhere. Now they’re trying to find a body.

Friends and neighbors have feared for months that Young met with foul play.

Running off, leaving behind his dogs, and abandoning all the possessions he had amassed are too out of character for Young to be even remotely plausible, friends said.

Possessions were important to Young, a retired machinist who liked to wheel and deal and buy equipment. “He liked to go to auctions and buy crates of things,” said his friend, McEuen.

He was only going to Las Vegas to drop off one of his three campers at a trailer park. He was doing it, friends said, so he could avoid the expense of hotels when he went to gamble, a recreation he enjoyed.

“He was very frugal, to say the least,” said Martin Vogel, a neighbor who said when he had Young to breakfast “the old man” complained about the eggs and coffee so much Vogel almost threw him out.

Complaining was as much a part of life for Young as eating and drinking. If the food at a restaurant wasn’t served the way Young had ordered it, “he’d send it back, with a loud voice,” McEuen said.

“He was a man who was used to getting his way,” she said. “It was his way or no way.”

Vogel said, “He would ask for help, then you’d go over and help him and he’d start screaming at you.”

As much as 30 years ago, McEuen said, Young completely cut off relations with his only sibling, a sister, because of a disagreement. Most people who knew Young didn’t know he had any relatives.

“Jim always told me, ‘I ain’t got no God-damn relatives,’ that all his money was going to (the state),” said Herb Williams, a friend who lives in Young’s North Hollywood home, which is one of at least two facing foreclosure because the mortgage payments haven’t been made in a year.

There’s even some confusion about how many times Young was married; it’s either once or twice depending on who you ask.

A couple years ago Young had considered marrying a young Filipino woman with whom he had become acquainted through letters and pictures. He was attracted to younger, foreign women, some say because he was looking for a caretaker as much as a wife.

Just before Christmas in 1990, Young suffered a stroke. A couple years ago he had another one. Although he recovered quickly, he was left with a limp and a speech impediment. The strokes frustrated Young.

It was his inability to do heavy labor that led Young to befriend Benanti, the man who said Young ran off to Mexico. Benanti worked for the landscape company that installed the shrubs and grass in the pricey Quartz Hill tract where Young moved in early 1991.

Young was, not surprisingly, unhappy with the landscaping work at his new home. Benanti came to Young’s house in response to the complaints and within a short time, Benanti was mowing Young’s lawn and maintaining the plants.

Neither neighbors or friends knew much about Benanti and when he moved into Young’s house shortly after Young’s Las Vegas trip it raised some eyebrows. Other than Fritz and Trixie, Young did not have housemates.

Neighbors say Benanti hasn’t been at Young’s house much in the past few weeks. After a date for the foreclosure sale was set earlier this month, Benanti began removing a lot of things from the house, including the back-yard spa. Benanti’s whereabouts are unknown to detectives.

Detectives are now trying to freeze Young’s assets and halt the foreclosures, Scott said.

Earlier this week, investigators changed the locks on the house and put yellow police tape around it.

While friends and neighbors fear the worst, they still maintain some hope that Young is alive. Investigators are just beginning what is expected to be a long search for some sign of the cantankerous old man, a sign that now may have faded.