Woman Identifies Officer’s Alleged Killer in Lineup

A man being held on murder charges in Oregon has been “positively identified” in a jailhouse lineup by a witness to the slaying of Manhattan Beach Police Officer Martin Ganz, Los Angeles sheriff’s officials said Monday.

But they acknowledged that another witness, Ganz’s 13-year-old nephew, was unable to identify the alleged killer in the lineup.

Nevertheless, investigators said that because of the other witness’s identification of Roger Hoan Brady, 28, a convicted bank robber and former Los Angeles-area resident, they soon expect to ask the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to file murder charges against him.

“We definitely believe he is responsible for Martin Ganz’s death,” sheriff’s spokesman George Ducoulombier said.

Because the murder of a peace officer is a “special circumstance” under California law, Brady could face the death penalty if he is charged and convicted.

He has not entered a plea in the Oregon slaying and is being held there without bail. The Oregon prosecutor handling that case said officials would be willing to return Brady to California for a possible trial here once they are finished trying him for the murder of a 55-year-old woman during a Safeway supermarket robbery Aug. 3 in suburban Portland.

But if Brady is convicted for the Oregon crime, California would have to return him to that state immediately after he was tried here.

“California could borrow the body to adjudicate their case,” said Washington County Dist. Atty. Scott Upham. “But then the person would have to be returned to Oregon” to serve out his sentence.

Brady faces three possible sentences in the Oregon case: the death penalty, life without parole or life with the possibility of parole. Upham said it is “up in the air” which state would carry out the sentence if Brady got the death penalty in California but a lighter sentence in Oregon.

The identification of Brady by the witness, an adult female whom authorities have not identified, is only one of several key pieces of evidence against him, sheriff’s spokesmen said.

Ballistics experts have determined that a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol found in Brady’s home after his arrest in Washington after the Portland robbery was the gun used to kill Ganz. Brady also was driving a gray 1988 Daihatsu that matched the description of the vehicle driven by Ganz’s killer, authorities say.

Ganz, 29, the first Manhattan Beach police officer slain in the line of duty, was killed Dec. 27 by a man he pulled over in a routine traffic stop near Manhattan Village shopping mall. Ganz’s nephew was in the patrol car on a “ride-along” but was not injured.

Brady, the son of former NBC television network correspondent Phil Brady, was convicted of robbing an Agoura Hills savings and loan in 1989 and served three years in prison. At the time of the Ganz killing he was under “supervised release”--the federal equivalent of parole--during which he was required to undergo treatment and monitoring for drug abuse.

Acting on an anonymous tip, investigators questioned Brady at his Topanga Canyon home shortly after the Ganz murder, but said they had no evidence at the time to link him to the crime.

Brady moved to Vancouver, Wash., in the spring. Investigators there say he also is a suspect in several supermarket armed robberies in the Vancouver-Portland area.