Voice Admitting Police Officer’s Killing Rings True, Experts Say

Voice experts say a caller who admitted killing Manhattan Beach Police Officer Martin Ganz sounded genuine when he claimed the fatal shooting was an accident, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Stoneman said Wednesday.

A tape recording made at Manhattan Beach police headquarters shows that during the call from a phone booth two days after the Dec. 27 slaying, a man said, “I kill a police officer. . . . What can I do, because I am not a criminal?”

“Oh, OK,” the 911 operator answered. “It was just an accident?”

“Yeah, an accident,” the man said, before hanging up.

Stoneman said the experts have concluded that “what they heard was some genuineness in the voice, (in) the different voice inflections and the things that were said by this individual.”

The description of the shooting as a possible accident contrasts sharply with the sheriff’s investigators’ account of the incident.

They said Ganz, 29, was on patrol when he stopped a driver in front of the Manhattan Village shopping mall for a possible traffic violation. With Ganz in his patrol car was his 13-year-old nephew, who was participating in a department-sponsored ride-along program.

The investigators said that when Ganz got out of the police car, the assailant opened fire. They said that Ganz retreated behind his car and the man followed him, firing several more shots.

Ganz, who was struck three times, pulled his pistol but did not return fire, the investigators said. They said the gunman pointed his semiautomatic pistol at the boy but did not pull the trigger.

Two fugitives have been identified as possible suspects in the case, but no arrests have been made.