Trial Opens in Murder Case; Defense Says It Was Cadaver-Snatching

On this much the prosecution and defense agree: The body found exactly seven years ago this week in a Glendale doctor’s office was not that of Melvin Eugene Hanson. Both sides also agree that Hanson’s death was staged as part of an insurance scam involving Dr. Richard Boggs, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon now serving a life prison sentence for murder.

There’s a third thing all agree on: The body identified as Hanson’s actually belonged to Ellis Greene, a 37-year-old North Hollywood bookkeeper.

But whether the corpse in question was that of a murder victim or mere cadaver-snatching was the mystery presented to a Superior Court jury in Los Angeles on Monday.

“The crux of our case is, there was no murder,” defense attorney Joan Whiteside Green asserted. Certainly not that of Hanson. As his defense attorney, Henry Hall, pointed out, Hanson was “alive and well and sitting at the defense table.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie told the jury that there was a murder--that Boggs, Hanson and John Barrett Hawkins conspired to kill a stranger, Greene, then pass off his body as Hanson’s to collect $1.5 million in life insurance.

How Boggs got his hands on Greene’s corpse is the central issue in the trial.

“Only Dr. Boggs knows what happened,” defense attorney Hall said.

But the defense has not said it will subpoena Boggs.

The defense claims that Hanson and Hawkins, partners in a sportswear company called “Just Sweats” in Columbus, Ohio, agreed only to pay Boggs to supply a corpse. Nobody asked Boggs to kill anyone, the defense attorneys assert. And, they contend, there is no proof that anyone was murdered, because the results of the autopsy are open to interpretation.

“They went to Dr. Boggs to secure a body, a cadaver,” said defense attorney Whiteside Green. “It’s distasteful,” she acknowledged, “it’s clearly unlawful, but it is not a murder case.”

Hall said that by 1987, Hanson had grown tired of Just Sweats and was looking for a way out. Hanson agreed to stage his death and split the insurance money with Hawkins to keep the business afloat, but it took Boggs months to deliver a corpse, Hall said. The price: $25,000 up front, with another $25,000 due on delivery, he said.

On April 16, 1988, Boggs dialed 911 and reported that one of his patients, Hanson, had died in his office. Hanson’s birth certificate and credit cards were found on the body.

Initially, the coroner ruled that the dead man, who was HIV-positive and whose blood alcohol level was a staggering 0.29%, had died of natural causes. The body showed signs of ulcers and liver disease.

Hawkins flew in from Ohio and had the remains cremated. After the autopsy report listed Hanson’s death by natural causes, he filed his insurance claims.

Five months later, after $1 million had been paid, fingerprints confirmed that the body was that of Greene, whose aunt had reported him missing. Friends told police they had seen Greene drinking at several bars April 15. One said he received a phone call from a “stressed”-sounding Greene shortly before midnight.

The coroner, at the request of police, reopened the file. The cause of death is unknown but murder is suspected, the revised coroner’s file stated.

Prosecutors hired Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally renowned forensic pathologist from New York. Baden concluded after viewing lab samples and photographs that Greene had been suffocated. By then, Hanson and Hawkins had disappeared.

The trail led from Glendale to Columbus to the Caribbean and beyond. It included appeals for help on “America’s Most Wanted” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Hanson became a fixture in Miami’s gay community, using his pseudonym, Wolfgang Eugene von Snowden, authorities have said. He had plastic surgery and hair transplants, and was still recovering from them when he was arrested at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport in 1991.

Hawkins changed names and appearance so many times that police dubbed him “The Chameleon.”

Hawkins lived an enviable lifestyle until August, 1991, when he was nabbed aboard his catamaran, the Carpe Diem, off Sardinia. He had been turned in by a Dutch girlfriend who had seen the Oprah show and was enraged by the disclosure of Hawkins’ other lovers.

Hawkins does not face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder. The Italian government refused to extradite him unless prosecutors agreed not execute him.