Chatsworth Woman Slain at Courthouse; Ex-Spouse Held

Exposing the lax security at Los Angeles County’s Downtown civil courthouse, a Woodland Hills physician shot his ex-wife to death in a crowded hallway Friday morning, sending jurors diving under couches and lawyers dashing for cover, officials said.

Police said Eileen Zelig of Chatsworth, who had told neighbors and the court that she lived in terror of her former husband, was mortally wounded by Dr. Harry Zelig as the couple and their young daughter were heading to another courtroom to resolve a dispute over the ownership of their car.

Harry Zelig was booked Friday afternoon on suspicion of murder. He was being held on $1 million bail, said Officer Don Cox of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Zelig was arrested in 1993 on suspicion of spousal battery, Cox said. Eileen Zelig filed court papers five months ago describing herself as “sick with fear” of her ex-husband, complaining of “his attempts to dominate and control my life.”

She said he had abused her by “planning to kill my dog, putting a loaded gun on my pillow with a note to use it on myself, hitting me, threatening me and other instances too numerous to mention.”

The file includes a note from a private detective, hired by Eileen Zelig, saying he had been warned that Harry Zelig “has a volatile personality and has been known to carry a handgun.”

Even in court, Eileen Zelig apparently was afraid. Witnesses said she kept glancing nervously at her ex-husband as he sat behind her during a morning court hearing. When they left the courtroom about 9:25 a.m., the couple took an escalator down one floor. Harry Zelig, 48, suddenly produced the .38-caliber pistol and fired, witnesses said.

Struck in the chest, Eileen Zelig, 40, sagged to the tile floor near a second-floor escalator.

“I heard a kid shouting, ‘He shot my mother!’ ” attorney Barbara Simmons said.

“The little girl was screaming, ‘Dad!’ ” Cathy Arch said.

Deputies swarmed to the scene and quickly arrested Zelig. Meanwhile, Rosetta Wilson, a lawyer who had worked as an Army nurse in Vietnam, rushed to the victim’s side, stripped away her flower-print dress and opened her airway by cutting a small hole and poking a pen in her trachea.

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Eileen Zelig regained consciousness and immediately asked about her daughter, who had stood screaming over her mother. “He tried to kill my little girl,” she told Robert K. Holmes, a Glendale attorney who was at the scene.

Eileen Zelig remained alert as paramedics rushed her to County-USC Medical Center, leaving behind her shredded, bloodstained dress. Despite efforts to staunch her bleeding, she died about three hours later in an operating room.

Friends, stunned at Zelig’s death, blamed authorities.

“How did this man with restraining orders against him get into a courthouse with a loaded gun and come right up and shoot her? This is what we can’t understand,” said Laura Weisshar, who lived near Eileen Zelig in Chatsworth. “If Eileen were standing right here, I think she would probably say that she did everything she could through the system and that the system failed her.”

The incident also dismayed attorneys and judges, who railed at the cash crunch that has prevented the court from buying metal detectors.

“It was inevitable that something like this was going to happen,” said Presiding Judge Gary Klausner. “And it’s inevitable that something like this is going to happen again, until we get the security we need.”

With no metal detectors and just five guards--two at doors, one on the loading dock and two roaming the halls--the civil courthouse is vulnerable. Visitors flow through 17 entrances, most of which do not pop up on the security guard’s monitor.

Security concerns have intensified in recent months as the courthouse has been pressed into handling an overflow of criminal cases.

Pegging the criminal trials as security risks, judges have asked for metal detectors at all entrances. Magnetometers in other county courts nab weapons. In March, guards in county courts seized nearly 2,500 weapons or potential weapons, ranging from screwdrivers to guns to scissors, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

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Klausner estimated that boosting security for the Downtown civil courthouse would cost about $1.5 million a year--a sizable expense for a county Superior Court system laboring under a $40-million budget deficit.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky on Friday drafted an emergency resolution calling for tougher courthouse security, including more metal detectors. Top-notch security is especially vital, Yaroslavsky’s resolution states, “in a judicial system where so many emotionally volatile cases are heard--including highly contentious divorce and child custody cases.”

The Zeligs’ divorce case was, by all accounts, one of the many contentious cases to land in the county courthouse’s family law division.

According to friends and documents, the couple split up nearly two years ago, after an argument during which Harry Zelig slapped his wife. Eileen Zelig called police, and her husband was led away in handcuffs, muttering, “The marriage is over.”

Harry Zelig, a family practitioner, moved to a Woodland Hills apartment. But he continued to threaten his wife and drive past the house they once shared in Chatsworth, neighbors said.

“If you know someone who is unstable and you’re a source of irritation to his living breath, you live looking over your shoulder,” said a neighbor who declined to give her name.

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Afraid to let her ex-husband near the house, Eileen Zelig sometimes asked him to pick up their children at a police station for custody visits, one friend said. She also changed the locks, bought a dog and flooded her back yard with lights, she said in court documents.

One note to her from Zelig, entered in the court record, concluded: “P.S.: You might find Judges Chapter 16 to be fun reading!” That chapter in the Bible recounts the story of Samson and Delilah, in which Samson, robbed of his strength by the treacherous Delilah and turned over to the Philistines, pulls down the temple on his enemies.

A February, 1994, note in the record from Harry Zelig to Eileen Zelig said: “If you ever testify at my trial this will be the divorce from hell and I will never leave you alone.”

The Zeligs’ disputes often involved money, as Eileen Zelig--a homemaker with no source of income--fought to get child support payments for their two daughters, ages 12 and 6, and their 10-year-old son.

According to court documents, Harry Zelig wrote her a letter in May declaring: “I will not pay you spousal support, ever. You have gotten the last penny of mine that you will ever see. . . . I have no problem with going to jail or dropping out of sight and letting you chase me around the planet.”

But a judge last month ordered him to pay more than $8,000 in overdue support.

The Zeligs’ court file contains a handwritten note, apparently a prenuptial agreement signed by Eileen, which reads: “Dear Harry, I promise never to lay claim to your house, car or pension fund, or to cheat you if we ever get divorced (which I never plan to).”

Her efforts to seize the car apparently triggered Friday morning’s attack.

Glendale attorney Robert K. Holmes, who witnessed the shooting, said Harry Zelig appeared at his ex-wife’s side shortly after the lone gunshot echoed through the courthouse. Dressed neatly in a suit and tie, he announced that he was the victim’s husband, Holmes said. Sheriff’s deputies quickly handcuffed him.

“There was not a thing out of place about him,” said Holmes, a former Los Angeles police officer who has been a lawyer for 20 years. “The guy is just standing there like a statue, no emotion, nothing.”

Times staff writers Henry Chu, Efrain Hernandez Jr. and Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.