Skeletal Remains of Two Brothers Missing Since 1978 Are Identified : Inquiry: Makeshift grave was washed away two years ago, yielding homicide victims. Attorney for man convicted and then released says development will not affect his ex-client.

Seventeen years after they disappeared from Huntington Beach, the skeletal remains of two brothers were identified this week, months after they were dug up from a Riverside County creek bed.

Although both brothers were members of a motorcycle gang, and both bodies were found with Harley-Davidson belt buckles and heavy black motorcycle boots, authorities never put the two together until now.

Riverside County Chief Deputy Coroner Dan Cupido said the remains of Allan G. Taylor, 22, and Charles D. Taylor, 20, were positively identified Thursday, almost two years after children playing around a dry wash found parts of a human skeleton sticking out of the ground.

In March, 1978, witnesses told police that two men had handcuffed the brothers and kidnaped them from the carport of their apartment building.

Thomas Pugh, a member of the Hessians, a rival motorcycle gang, was convicted in 1981 of killing the brothers, even though their bodies had not been found. But Pugh’s conviction was overturned by a state appellate court in 1985 on grounds that two key witnesses in the case had been hypnotized by prosecutors to help them recall events crucial to the case.

Prosecutors said at the trial that the Taylors were killed because they supposedly had stolen motorcycle parts from a rival gang.

The skeletons were found on top of each other, both wearing leather belts with Harley-Davidson belt buckles, and one skeleton wore a metal ring with a turquoise marijuana leaf in the middle. The skeletons showed evidence that the brothers had been shot, authorities said. Because of the depth of the grave, investigators believe it was dug with a backhoe.

Riverside County investigators tried to identify the remains for two years. They compared the teeth with dental records from dozens of missing men--not, however, including the Taylors.

Late last year, Riverside County authorities got the assistance of a forensic artist, who took almost six months to draw composite sketches of the victims using the skulls and anthropological references, Cupido said.

The sketches and a story about the skeletons appeared in the Riverside Press-Enterprise last month. Don Null, an investigator for the Orange County district attorney who had worked on another homicide case in the 1980s in which Pugh also was a suspect but never charged, saw the newspaper story and called Huntington Beach detectives. They sent the brothers’ dental records to Riverside authorities, who then made the identification.

A woman who used to manage a Santa Ana bar frequented by bikers and who knew the Taylor brothers also read the story and notified authorities, Null said.

Null was an investigator in the murder trial of Thomas F. Maniscalco, a former Westminster attorney and co-founder of the Hessians motorcycle club. After the longest-running criminal case ever in Orange County, Maniscalco was convicted in 1994 of the execution-style murders of three people in 1980.

“In 1980, some of Maniscalco’s neighbors reported that he was burying 50-gallon barrels in his back yard. We knew that the Taylor brothers were missing and suspected that he had put their bodies in the drums. We joined the Huntington Beach police in searching the yard but didn’t find anything,” Null said.

Los Angeles defense attorney Harland Braun, who defended Pugh, said the discovery of the remains and their positive identification will not affect the reversal of Pugh’s conviction.

“One issue in the case was whether the brothers had been killed. We always conceded they were dead. The issue was who killed them,” Braun said. “The fact that the skeletons have been recovered and identified makes no difference in this case.”

“The problem for the prosecution is that Pugh was identified by two witnesses as one of two men who kidnaped the brothers,” Braun added. “That can never be used against Pugh because the (appellate) court found they were hypnotized. I think this case is forever gone.”

Neither Braun nor law enforcement officials know where Pugh is living now.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick King said Friday that officials will review the case next week. Authorities in Riverside and Orange counties have to decide who will have jurisdiction in pursuing the investigation.