Trial Begins in Case of 1983 Beating Death of Irvine Man

A Wisconsin man used his fists and a heavy rubber mallet to kill the owner of an Irvine tire store, then eluded the law for close to a decade, a prosecutor told the jury Thursday as the trial of Scott Andrew Stockwell began.

Stockwell, 33, charged with killing Boyd William Finkel, 39, at first denied knowledge of the crime, prosecutor Debora Lloyd told jurors in Orange County Superior Court.

“In the end, what he does is he keeps telling the police different stories.”

The jury heard a tape of Stockwell’s interview with police when he was arrested in 1993, which begins with the foundry worker’s statement that Finkel was alive and well when he saw him last. But as police can be heard detailing the evidence they have to the contrary, Stockwell offered a different account.

Stockwell was hitchhiking on the evening of Oct. 15, 1983, when Finkel offered him a ride and, later, a place to stay for the night, Stockwell told detectives. When Finkel made sexual advances, Stockwell said, he rebuffed them. Later that night, Stockwell said on the tape, Finkel and a friend held him down and sexually assaulted him.

Afterward, when the friend had left, Stockwell was angered by Finkel’s continued lewd comments and tried to leave the Irvine home, he said during the interview at a Michigan police station.

“Well, I got up and started heading for the door and he got up in front of me and that’s when I hit . . . hit him a few times,” Stockwell said. The fight continued into the home’s garage, where Stockwell grasped a mallet, he said on the tape, and swung “more than 10 times.”

A week later, police found Finkel’s shirtless body in the trunk of his blue Cadillac in his garage on Lockhaven Circle. A large amount of dried blood was found throughout the living room.

On the tape, Stockwell said he was too frightened to call police and, after several hours of panic, decided to flee, taking only “a bottle of booze.”

Stockwell took one of Finkel’s other cars, a Honda Prelude, and fled the state, stopping to pick up a friend, who is expected to testify next week. After stops in Oregon and Idaho, Stockwell abandoned the Honda on a Montana logging road.

Lloyd suggested in her opening statements that Stockwell would seek to claim that he acted in self-defense, even though Finkel was unarmed. A business associate of Finkel who testified Thursday described Finkel as a “Wally Cox kind of guy,” a meek, diminutive man with a chronic back ailment.

Stockwell’s attorney opted to reserve his opening statement until the defense presents its case, and he declined comment on the case.

“As our case unfolds, you will see that Scott Stockwell is totally innocent of the charge against him,” defense attorney Jon M. Alexander said in a written statement.

For nine years, Irvine investigators were stymied in their pursuit of a suspect in Finkel’s slaying, even though the crime scene yielded fingerprints. In 1993, the debut of a computerized fingerprint database in Montana gave them the match they had sought: Stockwell’s prints were on file for a 1986 drunk driving arrest.

Stockwell was working at a foundry in his hometown of Marinette, Wis., when police asked him to come in for questioning. His wife, Megan, told a reporter in 1993 that Stockwell had overcome a drug problem and had become a model father and citizen.

“They picked the worst possible time to do this,” she said of police.

Stockwell is charged with first-degree murder and faces up to life in prison if convicted.