Suspect Was Identified as the Killer, Police Testify

Leonard Owen Mundy, a suspect in the shooting death of a 46-year-old flight attendant in what authorities believe was a hit gone wrong, was identified in a police lineup by three witnesses, according to testimony at the suspect’s preliminary hearing Monday.

The Los Angeles electrician, police officials testified, was the man witnesses said they saw at the corner of Mt. Marcus Street and Warner Avenue, where victim Jane Carver was shot. She was returning from a routine morning jog at Mile Square Regional Park and was a block from her Fountain Valley home when the June 10, 1995, attack took place.

Almost a year later, Mundy was arrested and charged with murder by prosecutors who alleged that he was carrying out a contract killing on behalf of a Huntington Beach finance company to which he owed money. They allege that Mundy shot Carver in a case of mistaken identity.

But Mundy’s attorney, Marlin G. Stapleton, said that his client is the one who is a victim of mistaken identity and that the wrong man was arrested.

“It’s not him,” he said outside the Westminster courtroom where the two-day preliminary hearing is being held.

Stapleton also hinted in his questioning of police detectives that Carver’s killer could have been Paul Gordon Alleyne, now on trial for the attempted murder of San Clemente resident James Wengert.

During cross-examination, Stapleton pointed out that none of the witnesses were closer than 100 feet to the site of the attack on Carver and that, while one woman had singled out Mundy in a live police lineup, she had previously selected Alleyne in a photo lineup.

Both suspects owed money to Premium Commercial Services Corp. in Huntington Beach. Authorities allege that Premium required creditors to take out large life insurance policies naming the company as beneficiaries.

Investigators believe that Wengert’s wife, Margaret “Peggy” Wengert, was the intended target instead of Carver and that Mundy shot her, thinking she was Wengert.

Three days before Carver was shot, Peggy Wengert filed a lawsuit against Premium Commercial, accusing company officials of strong-arming her to sign over the Fountain Valley home that the Wengerts had once owned. That house was not far from Carver’s home.

A former co-worker of Mundy’s, Jared Haynes, was also on the stand Monday, but he was a reluctant witness, saying he did not remember his earlier statements to investigators linking Mundy to the shooting.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Tanizaki presented Haynes with written transcripts in which the witness had stated that he overheard Mundy talking on his car phone about Carver’s shooting and about the wrong woman being killed.

“If there was anything said, I can’t recall it,” Haynes said on the stand Monday.

Carver’s husband, Al, sat through parts of the hearing but appeared uncomfortable, looking particularly distressed when witnesses referred to the “blood-curdling screams” of his wife in the last seconds of her life.

“It feels unreal,” Carver said later. “Even though it’s been a year and a half, it still feels like it’s part of a movie.”

Carver was surrounded in court Monday by a large group of his wife’s friends, many fellow flight attendants who wore angel pins in memory of her.

“We’ve lost Janie, now let’s see if we can survive [the trial],” said Kathy Barry, who was the victim’s best friend. “When you are so close to the person murdered, you want to see justice done.”