Man Charged 8 Years After Wife’s Slaying

From the beginning, police suspected that Guy Dean Bouck had killed his wife, Stephanie, for the insurance money. But they could not prove it.

After her body was discovered Jan. 3, 1987, he was arrested but quickly released for lack of evidence. There were no witnesses, no murder weapon, no reason why his fingerprints should not be all over the house they shared in Canyon Country. The burglar alarm was set, but silent, when the body was discovered by the victim’s daughter.

But Thursday, more than eight years after accountant Stephanie (Stevie) Bouck was shot, Bouck was charged in San Fernando Superior Court with her murder.

Bouck, who is imprisoned for another crime, made two crucial mistakes that led to his indictment on the murder charge, sources and court records say:

First, he waged a bitter family court battle over his wife’s estate, which aired his dirty linen and produced a rare result: A civil court judge ruled in 1990 that Bouck most likely had killed his wife--and therefore should inherit nothing from her.

And second, several weeks before the probate battle began, Bouck raped the woman who had provided his alibi for the night of the murder. The woman later would be a powerful witness against him: at the rape trial, which resulted in a 13-year prison sentence; in the probate case, and finally, sources say, before a Los Angeles County grand jury.

After years of delay, the district attorney’s office assigned the case in 1993 to Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Jonas, who reviewed the other court cases and uncovered new evidence that led to the indictment.

Bouck, 47, was arraigned Thursday on a charge of murder with three special circumstances that could carry the death penalty: lying in wait, torture and killing for financial gain. A former Army paratrooper who fought in Vietnam, he entered a plea of not guilty.

“Avarice and greed, coupled with a sociopathic attitude, usually leads you astray,” Jonas said. “Fortunately, there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“It’s about time. It’s been a long time in coming,” said Stephanie Bouck’s daughter, Debi Carll, now 35, who discovered her mother’s body in the master bedroom of the Boucks’ home and later led the probate fight against Bouck.

Said the woman who was Bouck’s alibi witness and then testified against him after he raped her: “I didn’t want to believe it, that somebody I cared about would be capable of such a thing.”

Jonas declined to discuss details. The transcript of the testimony that the grand jury heard remains sealed.

But much of the story has been laid bare in other court files, including the rape and probate cases.

Bouck stood to inherit 80% of his wife’s $100,000 life insurance policy; half their house, her 1987 Nissan 200 SX and a money market account, the documents show.

The records also reveal Bouck’s long record of involvement in violence toward women and children.

In a February, 1990, court brief, attorney Beth E. Yoffie, on behalf of Carll and the estate, detailed Bouck’s history of alleged domestic violence, dating back to September, 1971, when his stepson, Michael Gennard Kelley, 4, died at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colo., of a fractured skull and head trauma.

The child was convulsing and comatose, his body covered with bruises, when he was brought to the hospital.

A grand jury investigated Bouck, who was in the Army, and his then-wife, Cheryl, but no charges were filed. “The district attorney’s office felt (Bouck) should be handled through military authorities to receive mental help for his problem,” Yoffie said.

Five years later, according to court files, Bouck pleaded guilty to felony child abuse in Los Angeles Superior Court in Norwalk for injuries suffered by another child, Jennafer Parsons, described as “a victim of abuse and multiple bruises over a period of time.”

Ten years later, Bouck allegedly turned to violence again when his latest marriage, to Stevie Bouck, began to dissolve, Yoffie stated in court papers.

Realizing that his wife would divorce him, and that he would lose the “easy life he’d grown accustomed to,” he decided to kill her, Yoffie said.

Stevie Bouck was murdered in her bedroom in January, 1987, shot four times while wearing a nightgown. Her hands and wrists were bruised, indicating that she’d been restrained. Subsequently, Bouck filed a claim for her estate, which included her half of the house and $80,000 in life insurance policy proceeds.

Carll was appointed executor of the estate on March 20, 1987, and immediately sought to exclude Bouck as a rightful heir.

In June, 1989, Bouck filed a motion asking a judge to decide in his favor. He claimed that he did not kill his wife, and had no idea who did.

Judge Martha Goldin denied his petition on July 29, 1989, and Bouck appealed to the state Court of Appeal and Supreme Court without success.

In fighting the action over her mother’s estate, Carll asked a probate court for a fact-finding hearing into her death. In April, 1990, Probate Judge Richard C. Hubbell issued the unusual order finding that a preponderance of evidence showed Bouck had “feloniously and intentionally” killed his wife.

The ruling followed a two-month hearing that was, according to Yoffie, “the civil equivalent of a murder trial.” During the trial, investigators identified Bouck as their prime suspect. His former alibi witness realized that there were gaps in her memory and came forward, saying Bouck had not been with her the entire time his wife was murdered.

Six months later, she stood before a San Fernando judge and asked him to send Bouck to prison for raping her:

“The faces of the victims vary, however, the actions and the words and the attitudes of the perpetrator are the same. Michael Kelley and Stephanie Bouck are dead. Jennafer Parsons, Cheryl Kelley, Debi . . . and I are alive. All have experienced the wrath of Guy Bouck and all of us live in terror that one day he will finish the job.”