Fullerton Family Found in Torched Car : Crime: Vehicle containing the three bodies had been coated with flammable liquid.

A Fullerton couple were found burned beyond recognition in the back seat of their Honda Civic and their 19-year-old son was discovered dead in the trunk of the car, which had been set on fire late Monday outside a school, police said Tuesday.

A neighbor of Dolores and Edward R. Charles’ had called Fullerton police Sunday night and reported that a man was screaming for help from inside the trunk of a car near her home. But when police arrived, she said, the car was gone.

“I knew (then) someone would turn up dead,” said the woman, still shaken Tuesday and asking to remain unidentified. “It’s very, very weird knowing now that they are dead.”

Los Angeles and Orange County authorities were investigating the deaths as homicides but would reveal few details about the case, including possible motives.

Dental records have been sought to positively identify the parents, however, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department late Tuesday released the victims’ names.

Fullerton police would only say they received a disturbance call sometime after dark Sunday and that there was no car when they arrived in the area. A police spokesman said the department had received no missing-persons reports about the victims.

Sources said the bodies of Dolores Charles, 47, a self-employed typist whose clients included attorneys, and Edward Charles, 55, a Fullerton Hughes Aircraft engineer, were in the back seat of the car, and their son, Danny Charles, a USC voice student and opera singer who has starred in several local theater productions, was found in the unburned trunk.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies said they were able to positively identify the body of Danny Charles, which was found on a clear plastic tarp beside a yellow antifreeze bottle, both undisturbed by the blaze.

The car had been coated with a flammable fluid and then set on fire in the otherwise vacant parking lot of El Camino Continuing School in La Mirada, a few miles from the Sunny Hills neighborhood where the Charleses lived, Deputy Diane Hecht said. Residents near the high school saw the flames around 10 p.m. and called the Fire Department.

The front left tire of the gray Honda Civic--shown to the media Tuesday, its license plates masked--had exploded, apparently from the fire’s intensity. The hood was buckled, the interior had turned into twisted metal.

“We don’t have an MO on this crime, we don’t have suspects, we don’t have a motive,” said Sheriff’s Department spokesman Rich Erickson. “We’re asking for the public’s help.”

Anyone with any information is asked to call sheriff’s detectives at (213) 980-5500.

Acting as the family’s spokesman, Wally Negrini, Danny Charles’ singing teacher, stood on the porch of the family’s taupe and glass home and told reporters that the family wasn’t the type one would expect to have enemies.

“Dan was a teacher’s dream,” Negrini said through his tears. “He had such drive and talent. The whole family were wonderful people. Very supportive parents. An all-American, beautiful family. I don’t know anything that would explain why this happened.”

A surviving son, Eddie Charles Jr., about 21, did not want to be interviewed and spent part of Tuesday at the family home with his maternal grandfather and four or five others, Negrini said.

Eddie Charles Jr. is a mechanic at a nearby Chevron service station, where a co-worker said Tuesday night that officers had questioned some employees, but he would not elaborate. “I don’t know why they’re putting him through this,” the colleague said. “He’s having a hard time.”

The surviving son did not appear to live at home, but his new black truck had recently been outside the home almost daily, a neighbor said. Danny Charles lived on campus in a dorm, even acting as a resident adviser for other students. But both often visited their parents, friends and neighbors said. The Charles sons had both been athletes; Eddie Charles Jr. played soccer, even traveling to Europe for some games.

The family had lived in the neighborhood at least 12 years, when the Charles family bought their 1950s-era three-bedroom home atop a slight hill. Homes in the Fullerton neighborhood sit on large lots, and curved driveways sport luxury cars.

“The father used to play Dan’s opera tapes when he would do yardwork,” neighbor Jerry Kuhn said. “I heard the tapes one time and asked who it was singing, and he proudly said ‘That’s my son.’ ”

The Charleses’ neighbor who phoned police said she couldn’t remember exactly when she called 911 Sunday night, but she was walking friends out to their car when she heard yells for help coming from the trunk of a car parked a distance from her house.

She could not see anyone inside the car, but only heard the pleas. She said she ran inside to call for help and stayed there until the police arrived. By then--”it seemed like 30 minutes,” she said--the car was gone. It was too dark, she said, to really see the vehicle’s color.

By late Tuesday, she said she had still not spoken with Fullerton police since her initial Sunday call.

Besides confirming Edward Charles was an employee, Hughes Aircraft of Fullerton would make no further official comment. But co-workers and other company sources said that Edward Charles was a power supply engineer who worked at the Hughes division that makes radar display systems for ships.

On Tuesday afternoon, the 350-acre Hughes complex near Fullerton Municipal Airport was abuzz with the news of the mysterious death of one of its 6,800 employees.

“Oh, he’s the person in the unfortunate accident,” said a secretary.

“The word around here is that he hadn’t been at work for a few days,” said one worker.

Reports of Edward Charles’ death provided more drama to a plant that has been on edge for much of this year. In September, Hughes officials announced that the facility would be closing at the end of 1995, with 800 to 1,000 workers getting laid off and the rest being transferred to other company sites.

Dolores Charles worked from her home, but previously rented office space in a tony Irvine building where other tenants remembered her fondly Tuesday.

One said she was a warmhearted, chain-smoking professional who could always be counted on for advice and help.

“She was very sweet. She had a big heart,” said Suzie Brierley.

“She talked about her husband a lot. She seemed very happily married,” Brierley said. Photos of her sons adorned Dolores Charles’ office wall and she was often in a hurry to get home to care for her family.

“Dolores was tremendously involved in the High School of the Arts,” said Ralph Opacic, executive director of the high school where the youngest Charles son graduated in 1992. “She worked with our musical theater department and she did all of our publicity, all of our ticket layout and ticket sales. She basically was one of our leaders in our booster club.

“Danny was one of the few students who graduated from here who really showed tremendous promise and potential to be an actor,” Opacic said.

In his senior year, he said, Danny Charles was named Student of the Year and bestowed with half a dozen other awards.

Times staff writers Mark I. Pinsky, Nicholas Riccardi, Don Lee, Tracy Weber and Chris Woodyard contributed to this report.