Prosecutor of Knight Stirs Strong Opinions

These are the very few things about which there’s universal agreement about Larry Longo: He’s short, stocky and pugnacious.

And one of a kind.

Just ask his friends. Or his enemies. There seems to be no in-between.

Friends--and there are many--say that Longo, the deputy district attorney at the center of the storm involving Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight, is loyal, tough, clever and dedicated to his job, the law and, most important, his family.

Foes--and there are plenty--say Longo is rough-edged, stubborn and convinced his way is the only way. They call him an eccentric and a relic who never figured out a way to win a big case.

“I am what I am,” says Longo, dressed in his trademark Italian suit, silk tie and handkerchief with his “lucky” diamond-studded wishbone pin tacked to the lapel. “I’m a bulldog. I’m not the kind of guy you can intimidate. I’m direct and outspoken. I guess I’m a bit inflexible.

“But if you break the law, I’m going to convict you. That’s what I do for a living. And I love it. There’s only thing I love more than my job: my family.”

In the wake of disclosures that Longo’s daughter, Gina, signed a record contract with Death Row while Longo was the deputy district attorney in control of Knight’s case and that Knight lived in the Longo family’s Malibu home this summer, both friend and foe now agree on one more thing, a question: What could Longo have been thinking?

“He’s an honest prosecutor without a blemish on his record, as far as I know,” said criminal defense attorney Harland Braun, who has known Longo for years and counts him as a friend. “This kind of behavior just comes out of the blue.”

The 56-year-old prosecutor adamantly denies any wrongdoing.

He was taken off the Knight case Sept. 17, when the district attorney’s office received a tip that Knight was living in the Malibu house, and later placed on administrative leave with pay.

He also was ordered not to discuss his family’s business relationships with Knight until the district attorney’s office completes its investigation into those financial arrangements. Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Hodgman, who took over the Knight case from Longo, said in court he hopes that the investigation will conclude within days.

In court Oct. 30, Superior Court Judge John Ouderkirk said that the probe raises the “specter of criminal charges,” ticking off the possibility of obstruction of justice, bribery and extortion.

Appearing in court Nov. 1, however, Hodgman told Judge J. Stephen Czuleger--who took over the Knight case from Ouderkirk--that the district attorney’s investigation is a personnel matter only, not a criminal probe.

Czuleger declined at that Nov. 1 hearing to remove the entire district attorney’s office from the Knight case. But he noted that the swirl of events “just has a scent about it.”

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The case began with Knight’s assault on two aspiring rappers at a Hollywood recording studio in 1992.

In February 1995, under a deal recommended in court by Longo and by Knight’s chief defense attorney, Encino lawyer David Kenner, Knight entered no contest pleas to two counts of assault. Ouderkirk sentenced him that day to a nine-year suspended prison term and five years’ probation.

On Jan. 2, 1996, Longo’s 18-year-old daughter, Gina, signed a $50,000 recording contract with Knight’s wildly successful rap company. Five months later, his son, Frank, also an attorney, rented the family’s Malibu Colony house to Kenner for one year at $19,000 per month, with the bills paid by the accounting firm that represents Death Row. Kenner let Knight spend the summer at the home.

Hodgman and others in the district attorney’s office have said repeatedly that their review of the Knight case turned up nothing suggesting that a conflict of interest existed in February 1995, when the plea bargain was struck. Westwood attorney Donald Wager, now representing Longo, added that both the record contract and the lease were signed after the plea agreement was “etched in stone.”

“It was impossible for Mr. Knight to receive favorable treatment from Mr. Longo--no matter what arrangements his family had with Knight,” Wager said. “Under the plea agreement, if Knight violated his probation, Knight was required to go to prison for nine years. Anybody who has ever had a showdown with Mr. Longo in court will tell you that he has no qualms about putting criminals behind bars,” Wager added.

Nonetheless, Knight’s plea bargain kept him a free man.

Longo, who repeatedly had vowed early in the case to put Knight behind bars, has said that his views of the man changed considerably over time--but not as a result of his family’s financial ties.

In an interview in March 1995, Longo told a Times reporter, “I have never seen a guy transform as much as this guy has since he was first booked. It’s remarkable.”

Until Sept. 17, Longo was the deputy on Knight’s case, the prosecutor responsible for pursuing a probation violation that could have sent Knight to state prison. Knight now stands accused of violating probation on four different grounds--among them, an allegation that he was involved in an assault at a Las Vegas hotel--and faces a probation violation hearing Nov. 15.

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Because of the order forbidding him to talk about the Knight case, Longo declined in a recent interview to answer questions about it.

But one of his friends, Los Angeles writer Lawrence Taylor, said: “I believe there’s a whole lot more to this story, and Larry looks a whole lot better once you know what happened.”

Taylor--who recently wrote “The D.A.,” a book about a year in the life of the Los Angeles district attorney’s office that featured Longo as its primary character--declined to elaborate. But he did say that it came as no surprise to him to find Longo again in the spotlight.

Along with the book, Longo was featured in a 1995 segment of the “48 Hours” CBS-TV show, in which he was shown driving from his Malibu home to his former downtown office in a classic Cadillac convertible.

In 1992, when a drug task force conducted a raid in the Malibu area that led to the fatal shooting of rancher Donald P. Scott, Longo, a friend of Scott, stirred debate by criticizing as overkill the multi-agency drug operation aimed at forcing Scott to forfeit his property.

And in June, just hours after his sister-in-law was slain in her Torrance home, Longo showed up at the house with criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson. Lorrie Tuccinardi, the brother of Larry Longo’s wife, Aelina, now faces murder charges in the June 29 death of Karen Tuccinardi, according to the district attorney’s office.

A relative of the victim accused Longo of improperly using his position in the district attorney’s office to influence the investigation.

Abramson, who said she has been hired by Longo’s wife to represent Tuccinardi, said there is “absolutely no conflict based on his showing up at the crime scene.” She added: “It was his brother-in-law’s house, and he and his wife went there to talk to the children to make sure they were OK.”

In an interview, Longo called the slaying a “very sad and tragic domestic situation” but declined to say more.

In that case, Longo disclosed his relationship to the victim to his superiors in the district attorney’s office; the office has since tried twice to get the state attorney general’s office to take over the case.

“He’s not working on the case, so we feel there is no need for recusal,” said Matt Ross, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

Summed up Taylor: “This guy is one of the most colorful guys you’re ever going to meet. He’s like a bull in a china shop.”

Whatever motivated Longo to allow his daughter and the family beach house to become the focus of financial arrangements with a criminal whose plea bargain he presented in court, it seems unlikely that it was money.

Longo comes from wealth. The beach house alone, held in a family trust established by his mother, Audrey, is valued at $4.5 million, according to court papers. (There is no relation to the Longo Toyota family.)

His father, Frank, was a self-made millionaire who got his start in the 1930s selling insurance for the Bank of Italy, later to become the Bank of America. Longo’s godfather was L.N. Giannini, the son of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini.

“Money does not impress me,” Longo said. “I’m well-off.”

His father owned and operated restaurants and other properties. He also bought the Malibu Colony home so long ago--no one seems quite certain of the date--that the Longos believe they have maintained a residence there longer than almost anyone else in the gated, exclusive site--home to movie stars, famous artists and entertainment moguls.

Longo says he got his first taste for the law listening to courtroom tales recounted by his father’s high-powered friends, which included prominent attorneys and California Supreme Court justices.

Despite his father’s money, Longo was always working. Growing up, he loaded trucks in Bakersfield, sold pizzas and furniture in Beverly Hills, and worked as a lifeguard in Malibu. Longo played football at Loyola High School and Santa Monica Junior College and studied psychology at Loyola University. He earned his law degree from tiny San Fernando College of Law, now called LaVerne Law School. And then he became a prosecutor.

“I didn’t get into this job for money,” Longo said. “One reason I became a trial lawyer was because it allows me the opportunity to work in close proximity to my family. The other reason, and I know this might sound corny, is that the job enables me to give something back to society.”

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For years, according to “The D.A.,” Longo chose to commute to the downtown Criminal Courts Building from Malibu so that he could stop by his mother’s Hancock Park home. In 1994, after she died, he was transferred to the Beverly Hills office, much closer to Malibu.

In 26 years as a prosecutor, Longo has earned a reputation as a tough and ready advocate. He has never been disciplined for any ethical impropriety, according to the State Bar of California.

Attorneys who have squared off against him say Longo can be ruthless in court, obliterating witnesses with blunt, quick-witted questioning.

“I would rate Larry Longo as one of the top 20 trial lawyers that the Los Angeles district attorney’s office has produced in the past two decades,” said Sterling “Ernie” Norris, himself so highly regarded by his peers that the California District Attorneys Assn. once named him prosecutor of the year.

Defense attorney Abramson called Longo “one of the most decent, hard-nosed prosecutors I’ve encountered.”

During his career, Longo has remained a trial deputy--never advancing to management, trying a long list of cases involving murder, rape, drug dealing and other crimes.

Although he says he never tried to enter the administrative ranks, Longo said he and four trial lawyers entered a lengthy legal battle in the late 1970s with the Civil Service Commission over testing procedures for promotions in the district attorney’s office. Longo lost that internal departmental battle, as he did another in which he challenged overtime policies.

“One thing about me: I never buddy-buddied or kissed up to the administration,” Longo said.

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In the 1980s, he prosecuted the so-called Chinatown case, which stemmed from a robbery that caused the deaths of a Los Angeles police officer and two holdup men.

Longo had sought a first-degree murder conviction for Hau Cheong “Peter” Chan, the alleged mastermind of the robbery. Abramson defended him. The jury found Chan guilty of second-degree murder.

Longo clearly regarded the verdict as a disappointment. He had sought to send Chan to death row at San Quentin and called the verdict “a terrible miscarriage of justice.”

The case also marked the one time that Longo was regularly in the public eye as the point man for the prosecution in a high-profile trial. When it ended, he returned to the trenches.

In recent years, he has been assigned to cases such as the one that involved a woman accused of castrating her sleeping husband with a pair of scissors.

“I may not be a legal genius, but I am a fierce trial lawyer, and I know how to tell my story to the jury in plain, simple English,” Longo said.

“I’m a very aggressive guy. I used to be a [high school football] running back. You hit me and I get right back up. Hit me again and I’ll bounce back again. The more you hit me, the better I get.”