Boy Planned to Kill Father, Ambush Police

When 17-year-old Christopher Golly fatally shot his father and then opened fire on police with an assault rifle, killing a rookie female officer, he was carrying out an ambush that he planned and discussed the day before, Los Angeles police officials and a friend of the dead youth said Wednesday.

Just hours before the shooting, the young gunman, a heavy methamphetamine user, described his mental state to his best friend with the words “Insanity is fun,” the friend told The Times.

The remark was made during one of several conversations the afternoon and evening preceding the attack in which Golly made “specific threats” that he planned to kill his father, Steven Golly, 49, and then fight “a gun battle” with officers called to the scene, said Police Lt. Daniel Lang.

But officers did not know that when they were called to the middle-class Northridge neighborhood about 1:20 a.m. Tuesday, where Golly had just shot his Vietnam veteran father to death using a military-style semiautomatic rifle--which his gun enthusiast father had given him as a gift so they could share a common interest, according to a family friend.

The son gunned down the father to the music of “The End,” a song by The Doors in which singer Jim Morrison fantasized about killing his father.

Then, in a bloody scene that played out precisely as police say the younger Golly threatened, he opened fire from an ambush position beside the dark house on six officers arriving to investigate a report of shots fired.

Golly was waiting with an AR-15-type assault rifle behind a brick wall where he had “a visual kill zone of 180 degrees,” said Lang, officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Major Crimes Investigations Section.

Killed in the spray of at least 14 shots was police rookie Christy Lynne Hamilton, 45, struck by one shot through an armhole in her bulletproof vest, a gift from her mother. She became the second female Los Angeles police officer to die in the line of duty.

The youth then retreated to the house and shot himself to death with a .22-caliber handgun.

Investigators learned that the teen-ager “had made specific threats that he was going to kill a police officer,” said a police spokesman, Lt. John Dunkin. But, he added, “we became aware after the officer was killed.

“If we knew that (beforehand), I can assure you that other steps would have been taken,” Dunkin said. “We would have tried to locate and talk to him well before this situation.”

One of the last people Golly talked with was Matt Conner, 18, who described himself as Golly’s best friend.

In an interview with The Times on Wednesday, Conner said he talked with Golly at Golly’s house about 9 p.m. Monday and “he said he was going to take the assault rifle and shoot him,” meaning his father.

“He said he plans on taking a couple people with him. He wanted to take out a cop, and a cop car,” Conner said.

“ ‘Gee, Matt, insanity is fun,’ ” Conner quoted Golly as saying.

But Conner said he persuaded Golly to “promise on our friendship” that he wouldn’t shoot anyone. “The last words he said were, ‘I give you my word that I wouldn’t do it.’ ”

A message written in black marker pen on Golly’s bedroom wall when a reporter entered it Wednesday said: “Friends & Butthead made me do this hah-hah. Tell Matt I said, ‘Sorry.’

Police said Conner, who volunteered his testimony to officers even before they left the shooting scene Tuesday morning, will not be charged with any crime.

Susan Bever, the live-in girlfriend of Steven Golly, said in an interview that Christopher Golly was especially depressed since a Feb. 14 marijuana conviction that led to suspension of his driver’s license.

After a quiet dinner Monday night, Christopher defied the suspension by taking his truck for a drive, she said, prompting his father to say that he would “have to disable the (truck).”

Early Tuesday morning, the constant throb of the bass from the boy’s stereo could be clearly heard in the couple’s bedroom, Bever said. Then, about 1 a.m., the volume suddenly increased. She said the song was “The End.”

Steven Golly got out of bed. Bever heard him open his son’s door and angrily ask what was going on. There was a “pop” sound and a flash of light.

“I knew it was a gun,” Bever said, and Steven Golly fell face-forward onto the floor, shot once.

The 17-year-old then calmly asked Bever and Bever’s son Aaron to leave the house. Aaron’s girlfriend, Connie McGovern, had already left the house.

McGovern returned to take the cordless telephone with her. From outside, McGovern called 911.

In conducting a routine review of the fatal confrontation, police determined that there were no tactical errors, but that officers unwittingly exposed themselves because Golly’s corner house had an address that made them expect to find it in the middle of the block, where they saw a woman waving to them.

Consequently, they pulled their black-and-white squad cars up right in front of the Golly house or next to it, making them easy targets.

“They stop in what they think is a position of advantage down the street, and unbeknownst to them it is right in front of the house,” said Dunkin.

Police said Golly fired at least 14 shots at two squad cars as the officers emerged, including two shots at Hamilton’s cruiser. But they said it was too dark for him to be aiming at any particular officer.

Hamilton’s mother, Marge Hoffberg, former wife of an LAPD detective, said she wanted her daughter to become a teacher rather than a police officer, because she remembered the 17 years she had spent worrying whether her husband was safe.

Despite her apprehensions, Hoffberg said she was proud when Hamilton graduated from the Police Academy only last Friday.

“She realized a dream that she had,” Hoffberg said. “I’d rather she’d be here with me tonight, but you can’t live your children’s lives. She did what she had to do.”

Hoffberg said she bought the bulletproof vest because her daughter could not afford all the equipment needed for police training.

“I wanted her chest protected,” Hoffberg said. “I wanted to do something to save her life if she ever needed it.”

In the Golly family, the father apparently used guns to maintain a relationship with his increasingly estranged son. Steven Golly’s business partner and 30-year friend, Yo Hasegawa, said that Steven Golly and his son often went target practicing and that the AR-15-type rifle was one of their favorite weapons.

“I knew he had bought it for his son and they used it a lot for target shooting,” said Hasegawa, a partner with Golly and another man in the Acme Electric Supply Co. Inc. of Culver City, a wholesale supplier of electrical equipment. “I know the son had shot that gun a lot.”

Friends and other members of the Golly family said the bloody neighborhood shooting was apparently the finale of a long deterioration in the teen-ager, touched off, they believe, by the death of Christopher Golly’s mother from a cocaine overdose four years ago.

“He was close to no one that I know except for his mom and possibly his dad,” said the youth’s maternal grandfather, Ernest J. Reepmaker. “He has always been an inward person, never showed feelings.”

Reepmaker partly blamed his daughter, Pamela Golly, who lived in a house in Acton after separating from the boy’s father.

“She’d make a date with him to go to a movie and dinner and a couple hours before she’d call up and give him out-of-your-mind excuses.”

A good student in elementary and junior high school, Christopher had recently been skipping class and had begun a study-at-home program after being transferred from Granada Hills High School to the Granada Hills Continuation School.

Friends said that he liked to play video games and pool and that he favored “speed metal,” a driving guitar-based music that is a marriage between punk and heavy metal.

Although friends said Golly had become a frequent user of methamphetamines, no drugs were found in the house, police said.

The shooting drew national attention when President Clinton referred to it during his comments on new earthquake aid to California.

“Even though this is a time of renewal and reconstruction for the people of Los Angeles and California, it’s also a day of sadness for many people in that area and for many of the rest of us who believe in the rule of law and appreciate those who enforce it,” Clinton said.

Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo, David Colker, Chip Johnson, Chou Lam and Ann W. O’Neill contributed to this story.