Judge’s Body Found Below Rocky Cliffs

The body of a Superior Court judge under investigation for insurance fraud was found Thursday beneath cliffs on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in what investigators called a probable suicide.

Douglas A. McKee, 56, was discovered by Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators about 10:40 a.m. His Corvette was parked on a street above.

McKee, a recently divorced 12-year veteran of the Torrance Superior Court, was under investigation by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office--his former employer--for filing improper claims, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said in a statement. Prosecutors would not discuss details of the case. McKee’s attorney, Redondo Beach lawyer Robert Courtney, declined to comment.

News of McKee’s death sped through the Torrance courthouse Thursday afternoon, shocking colleagues who recalled the judge as a fair and professional magistrate, and as a warm and affable man who often chatted with attorneys about sports cars.

“Everybody loved him,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Peggy Beckstrand said.

Deputies were called Thursday morning to investigate an abandoned car at Point Vicente Interpretive Center, a large park on the edge of the steep, rocky cliffs of Rancho Palos Verdes. It is an area they know well--in April, a woman was killed when she leaped from the cliffs, and in March, a teenage couple jumped to their deaths from a narrow ledge north of the center.

Although McKee’s car was found about 8:30 a.m., his body was not spotted for another two hours. Investigators say they are unsure how long it lay at the bottom of the cliffs.

In McKee’s old neighborhood five miles away in Rolling Hills Estates, residents on Bluemound Road remembered him as an outgoing, athletic man who coached his two sons, Drake and Grant, in Little League baseball and soccer. Drake recently graduated from the University of Oregon, and Grant attends Los Angeles Harbor College, neighbors said.

Charlene and Richard Petersen, who lived next door to the McKees for 23 years, last saw the judge in July when he officiated at their daughter’s wedding. “He was a fine man. A fine neighbor. And a fine jurist,” Charlene Petersen said. “What has happened is really tragic.”

McKee was born in Lincoln, Neb., but his family moved to Southern California when he was 3 months old, eventually settling in Culver City. A graduate of Cal State L.A., he earned a law degree from UCLA and spent two years in private practice before joining the district attorney’s office in 1968.

McKee spent five years prosecuting rape and murder cases and serving on the Culver City school board before then-Dist. Atty. Robert Busch tapped him to become the office’s first full-time lobbyist in Sacramento.

Commuting from his home in Rolling Hills Estates, McKee spent nearly 12 years as the district attorney’s lobbyist in the state Capitol, drafting and promoting bills favorable to local prosecutors, such as ones boosting mandatory sentencing requirements.

In 1984, then-Gov. George Deukmeijian appointed McKee to the bench. He was reelected in 1986 and 1992. McKee said in past interviews that he enjoyed the post because it gave him the chance to spend more time at home with his family.

Lawyers said McKee was an excellent jurist. “He was a very fair judge,” recalled Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay, head of the Torrance office. “But if the defendant got convicted, he was a tough sentencer.”

McKee was also a supporter of the now-defunct Brotherhood Raceway on Terminal Island, founded by a local activist after the 1992 riots to bring together members of rival gangs. McKee raced his 1985 Corvette on the strip.

In a 1992 interview with the Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, McKee said he believed in second chances. “I tell everyone . . . probation is only given because I think that he or she has a chance to turn their lives around,” he said.

This summer, after 26 years of marriage, he and Sheila McKee finalized what friends described as a bitter divorce. In the fall, district attorney’s investigators reportedly searched McKee’s home and chambers while investigating him for allegations of false insurance claims.

Garcetti’s statement stressed that no criminal charges had been filed against McKee. Nonetheless, colleagues noticed that the usually gregarious jurist had been withdrawn recently.

“I think he was very depressed,” Kay said.

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this story.