Widow Alleges Notary Public Helped Husband Loot Savings

The widow of a man who killed himself after slaying their two young children here on Father’s Day has filed a lawsuit alleging he first forged her signature and pillaged his retirement fund with the help of a notary public.

Debra Forrester’s lawsuit accuses notary public Cheryl Carrillo of illegally notarizing a document for Larry LaMar Sasse.

Sasse then used the document to empty his retirement account of more than $23,000, sharing none of it with his wife, says the suit filed last week in the East County Courthouse.

The suit alleges that Sasse went to Carrillo on March 26, 1995, two days after he quit his job with an oil refinery in Los Angeles.

Without his wife’s consent, the suit alleges, Sasse had Carrillo notarize a profit-sharing distribution form, which he then used for an early withdrawal of the money in his Individual Retirement Account.

But the form was either blank at the time or bore a forged signature purporting to be Forrester’s, the suit says.

Forrester and Carrillo could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

But Gary Nevers, Forrester’s attorney, said Wednesday that he has been negotiating with Carrillo for a possible out-of-court settlement. He filed the suit last Tuesday to beat a one-year statutory deadline and keep the claim alive in case negotiations fail, he said.

Nevers said Carrillo told him that the form was blank when she notarized it--which he said is a violation of laws governing notaries.

But the document filed with Forrester’s lawsuit shows a signature that reads “Debra K. Sasse.” And the signature is in a hand that is radically different from the signature Sasse’s widow used on court papers when she sought a restraining order against her husband the month before.

Sasse’s widow has legally changed her last name and the last name of her two deceased children to her maiden name, Forrester.

The suit says that Larry Sasse, using the document Carrillo notarized, applied to his employer, Huntway Refining Co., to collect his benefits.

On April 10, Huntway paid out the entire benefit--$23,561.08--to Sasse, the suit says. None of it went to his wife, who by then had separated from her husband and filed for divorce.

Sasse then spent the proceeds during the two months that led up to the fateful rampage, the suit alleges.

At this point, family and friends had said, Larry Sasse had descended into methamphetamine-fueled paranoia. He made death threats against his wife and her family and was drinking as much as a 12-pack of beer a day, friends and family said.

On June 18, Sasse picked up his children, Breanna, 4, and Michael, 3, from the home of his in-laws, where the kids were living with their mother.

He took the children to a nearby park for a time, then returned to the house where he was living, a roommate said at the time.

Debra Forrester had been waiting for him to hand them off to her at the Simi Valley Police Station, where they had agreed to make the switch.

But when she heard a police dispatcher’s call on the station radio reporting gunfire, she rushed over to Sasse’s house to find he had shot their children dead, then fatally shot himself in the head in apparent despair over his failing marriage.

The suit demands that Forrester be awarded the $23,561, plus interest of about $2,300, attorney’s fees, and a $10,000 settlement from Carrillo’s bonding company, Western Surety, which is also named in the suit.