Motown Music Writer Held in Valley Slaying After Search : Crime: A Chicago singer he was traveling with is missing. Her family and police fear the worst.

Across the nation, people were looking for Jack Goga.

From Woodland Hills, where police say he killed his host, to Simi Valley, where he is suspected of assaulting his ex-wife’s old boyfriend, to his Michigan hometown where he was finally arrested Saturday night, the hunt was on.

Goga’s half-sister wanted to know why she hadn’t heard from him in months. The family of Digna Adames, a 25-year-old Chicago singer whom Goga had taken to Los Angeles, wanted to know why she had disappeared.

And Los Angeles police wanted to know what happened in the house on Del Valle Avenue in Woodland Hills, where Charles (Chick) Evans was found shot to death.

Goga, a 50-year-old Motown songwriter and former record producer, had been staying at the house with Evans. When Evans’ bullet-riddled body was discovered there by a friend last week, Goga had vanished along with Evans’ car.

Goga left behind notes containing the names of people he was planning to kill, Los Angeles police say--including the man who found Evans’ body; Goga’s ex-wife, Kate Wolfe; her father and Adames.

Now the people who had been looking for Adames fear the worst. “It doesn’t look too good for my sister,” said Rosa Medina, 23.

Police in Huntington Woods, a town north of Detroit where Goga grew up, found him Saturday night after his half-sister, Mary Danescu, 67, reported a prowler in her back yard.

Officers followed footprints in the snow from Danescu’s home and eventually caught a shivering Goga a few blocks away, carrying a loaded revolver, said Lt. John Morrison of the Huntington Woods Police Department. Los Angeles and Simi Valley police were planning to fly to Michigan to interview Goga today.

Goga grew up in the house where Danescu now lives, but he went to California to make it in the music business more than 20 years ago.

He worked as a record producer, according to an ASCAP biography, and wrote a few songs, including some for Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops. Then, in the 1980s, Goga left his first wife for Wolfe, a Simi Valley woman, Danescu said.

They married six years ago, Danescu said, but the marriage broke up about two years ago and that shattered Goga.

He began staying with friends in California, moving from one place to another. Danescu said she heard he once lived in his car for a few days.

He moved to Chicago about a year ago, Danescu said, and met Adames, a cosmetician and mother of a 7-year-old boy.

According to Medina, Adames was in a singing group of three women, to whom Goga promised a contract with Warner Bros. The group recorded a song, but when Goga tried to persuade them to go with him to Los Angeles to present the music, only Adames agreed.

“She was a little nervous about going, but she wanted to take a chance,” Medina said. “She is a single mother, and she wanted to do right by (her son). She wanted to put him in private school.”

Goga also ingratiated himself with Adames’ family, staying in their house for about a month before leaving, Medina said, promising the financially strapped household he would supply it with a microwave and put Adames’ 19-year-old brother through the Chicago Institute of Art.

In late May, Adames and Goga drove to Los Angeles.

Goga had become infatuated with Adames, although she had a fiance in Chicago, LAPD Detective Larry Dolley said. Goga carried a picture of Adames’ old singing group and would point her out as his girlfriend, Dolley said.

Adames had always tried to keep her relationship with Goga on a professional level, Medina said. She would call home from California virtually every day, and she sent several packages to her son.

The last call came on Father’s Day, June 19. She had arranged to return to Chicago the next week.

“He had said he was going to hook her up with the right people,” Dolley said. He speculated that she might have changed her mind and that he then killed her.

When she didn’t come home, Adames’ family reported her missing.

On June 21, Dolley said, Goga attacked Wolfe’s old boyfriend at his Simi Valley residence and wrestled with him over a gun, then fled. Simi Valley police obtained a warrant for his arrest, but couldn’t find him. His only address, police said, was a post office box.

Sometime after, he moved in with Evans, a retired movie technician with a fondness for cars. Neighbors said the friendly Evans and cold Goga were an odd pair.

Police speculate that Goga shot Evans about three weeks ago, probably because Evans wanted Goga to leave. Goga, Dolley said, then seems to have stayed in the house with Evans’ body for more than a week.

When a friend telephoned asking for Evans, Goga would say Evans was sick or out of the house, Dolley said. But the friend, a 45-year-old Van Nuys man, became suspicious, went to the house and discovered the body, Dolley said.

And Goga was gone.

Police began to hunt. They staked out the house, circulated descriptions of Evans’ yellow 1972 Volvo station wagon and called Huntington Woods police to warn that Goga might be returning.

Four days later he was arrested in Michigan and taken to a hospital with a diabetic condition and dislocated shoulder.

Los Angeles police said they didn’t know if Goga truly intended to carry out the death threats in the notes he left behind.

“He had a weapon with him when he was arrested, so anything’s possible,” Dolley said.

Mary Danescu says she’s not certain now if she wants to see her half-brother. “I’m so depressed by the way his life has turned out,” she said. “He had such talent. He wrote such beautiful music.”