Serial Rapist Charged in ’81 Valley Killing

Prosecutors on Tuesday filed murder charges against a serial rapist who they say killed a Sherman Oaks woman in her bedroom in 1981 and eluded prosecution for 15 years, until he was arrested on suspicion of another killing.

Los Angeles police detectives unearthed new evidence against Edward Perreira, 40, after an article in The Times in March detailed how he had apparently slipped through the cracks in the criminal justice system, authorities said.

Perreira is in custody in San Mateo County under the name Michael Flores, charged with another murder in the death of a woman there last fall.

“It took 15 years, but it’s still good news,” said Howard Landgren, a now-retired LAPD detective who investigated Perreira in the 1981 killing of Beth Field Silver but was unable to persuade the district attorney’s office to charge him then.

After the report in The Times, Malibu businessman George Field, father of the victim, and his wife, Donovan, lobbied prosecutors for four months to bring charges against Perreira, going all the way to a meeting with Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti late last month. On Tuesday, Field thanked Garcetti and other prosecutors and detectives for taking action.

“On Thursday, Donovan and I are going to Betsy’s grave,” Field said. “We’re going to put down some lovely flowers and I’m going to tell her and hope this will never happen to another girl again.”

Prosecutors had twice before declined to charge Perreira with the killing but changed their minds after LAPD Dets. Dan DeJarnette and Roberta Moore found new evidence that placed Perreira at Silver’s home the day of the killing, authorities said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Cohen said Tuesday that the evidence shows Perreira “made contact” with the Silver home the day of the killing, but said he could not specify how. It and other unspecified new evidence was enough for prosecutors to charge Perreira with one count each of murder, robbery, burglary and rape, making him liable for the death penalty.

Phil Wynn, head of the district attorney’s Van Nuys office, said Field and The Times article convinced him to take a third look at the case.

Born in Brooklyn, Perreira--also known as Michael Flores and Eddie Caruso--allegedly began a two-decade crime spree in 1976, when he was arrested on suspicion of raping three women after his discharge from the Marines. In those cases and in subsequent attacks, Flores bound his victims with their own clothing before assaulting them.

Drifting from New York to Florida to Los Angeles, Flores eventually found work at a Southland rental car company owned by Stewart Silver, now owner of the Anaheim Bullfrogs roller hockey team.

Silver found his wife of two months, Beth, 26, bound with a sweater and shot once in the head in the bedroom of their hillside home the night of Oct. 2, 1981. One week later, Landgren and fellow LAPD homicide Det. Bob Horowitz arrested a man who worked at her husband’s rental car company--apparently the wrong man.

The evidence against that suspect, Michael Robbs, was flimsy and he was acquitted in a jury trial. Meanwhile, Horowitz and Landgren found a witness who had seen Silver talking with another man in her kitchen hours before her death.

Armed only with an artist’s sketch of the man, who had a tattoo reading “Eddie” on his right bicep, the detectives identified him as Perreira, tracing his path back to New York City where they dug his records out of a roomful of NYPD files.

Perreira, whose frequent name-changing led to his being listed in California law enforcement records as Flores, was already serving a 24-year sentence for rape in a California state prison when the detectives found him in the 1980s. But the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to file murder charges against him, saying it would follow too closely on the heels of Robbs’ acquittal, those familiar with the case recall.

In 1993, Perreira was paroled to San Mateo. His parole officer called homicide detectives in the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division to warn them of “Flores’ ” impending release. Horowitz and Landgren had long since retired, but current homicide investigators pulled their old files and reopened the case, taking it again to the district attorney’s office.

Again, prosecutors declined to file. The prosecutor who made the decision, Deputy Dist. Atty. Phil Rabichow, said one reason was that the witness who placed Perreira in Silver’s house did so only under hypnosis--which was admissible as evidence at the time, but has since been banned.

Perreira, released from prison, found work on an assembly line outside of San Francisco. Two years later, in October of 1995, prosecutors said he raped and beat to death with a hammer Michelle Hardeman, 29, in an unincorporated part of San Mateo County. After a five-day manhunt, Perreira was caught leaving a San Francisco department store, and he remains in custody facing murder charges with special circumstances. He has pleaded not guilty.

By coincidence, Horowitz was driving through the San Francisco area at the time, heard a news report of the arrest on his car radio, and contacted local authorities to establish that it was the same murder suspect he had been after 14 years previously.

Not only did Horowitz and former partner Landgren invest hours of time in meetings with prosecutors about the case, but DeJarnette, one of the current detectives, continued the investigation on weekends and vacations. “The cooperation we have received has been incredible,” Cohen said. “The city was well-served by having guys like this work for them.

“It’s a difficult case, as all circumstantial cases are, but I have no doubt we have the right guy,” Cohen said. “We’re going to give it our all once we get our hands on him.”

First, Perreira will face a preliminary hearing and trial on the murder charges in San Mateo, authorities said. After that trial, he will be tried in Los Angeles.

Field said that the filing has renewed his faith in the system. “It might take time,” he said, “but it works.”