Police Investigate Wife in Man’s Beating Death

It’s been a year since Jean Adair told police she was bound and gagged during a home-invasion robbery by an intruder who beat her husband to death with a baseball bat.

The slaying in the couple’s gated condominium complex sent police on the trail of a man posing as a gas company employee. The case remains unsolved, but Los Angeles police have stopped looking for an outsider--and instead are looking at Jean Adair. She had been engaged in a six-month affair with a San Fernando Valley physician at the time of the killing.

“Because she has refused to give a formal statement we have been unable to eliminate her as a suspect,” homicide Det. Patty Ferguson said. “Are we focusing on anybody else? No.”

The notion is shocking to Adair, who, through her attorney, maintains her innocence.

A year ago this week Jean Adair was ringing a neighbor’s doorbell, screaming for help, red marks on her face, tape hanging from her wrists. Later, she told police a gruesome tale of how her husband had come home for a home-cooked lunch and surprised an intruder who had already bound her. The Adair’s children, Christopher, 9, and Erin, 11, were at school at the time.

“She had nothing to do with this,” said Richard Plotin, one of Adair’s two attorneys. “It has been a totally emotionally traumatic year for her. It’s been very sorrowful, very hard for her just to keep going on.”

Plotin said Jean Adair, 37, was injured in the attack, undergoing surgery earlier this year for a smashed disk in her lower back.

He said she also voluntarily gave police a blood sample and fingerprints about a month after her husband’s slaying.

“She was trying to exonerate herself,” Plotin said. “She was trying to cooperate and show she had nothing to hide.”

Since then detectives have refused to rule her out as a suspect in the case, and for that reason, Plotin said, he has advised her not to talk to the police.

“It’s somewhat of a Catch-22, I guess,” said Det. Ferguson. “But there’s obviously stuff that needs to be cleared up. And the only one who can do that is Jean Adair.”

It is not only police who suspect Adair.

“I risk my soul going to hell, but I believe that she did it or had someone do it,” said Robert Adair’s mother, Margarita Sutcliffe, who visits her son’s grave site every day.

Sutcliffe and other relatives said there were several life insurance policies on Robert Adair, worth more than $500,000 after his death.

“But the police let all the insurance companies know that [Jean] is a . . . suspect in a murder investigation and that if they want to pay, they’re paying at their own risk,” said John Adair, a brother.

Ferguson confirmed that insurance investigators have been told Jean Adair is a suspect.

One of four children, Robert Adair was born into a wealthy family and raised in Beverly Hills.

“He was what some might call a momma’s boy,” his mother said. “He would call almost every day just to ask me how I was doing.”

Robert Adair went to work for the Sylmar Medical Center about a decade ago, earning about $24,000 a year as a medical assistant. He told his mother the work was deeply gratifying.

“He just loved his patients so much,” she said.

The medical center is also where Robert Adair met Jean, who worked in the billing department.

The two were married and had two children. But Sutcliffe said the marriage had been troubled for several years. Talk of divorce began three years ago, she said.

“But I told him it takes years to build up a relationship and just one minute to destroy it,” she said. “So I told him to stay.”

But things didn’t improve, Sutcliffe said. She said her son, who was 40 when he died, had suspected his wife of having affairs and learned of her relationship with physician Michael R. Shapiro.

Plotin believes suspicion turned on Jean Adair after accusations were made by Shapiro’s ex-wife.

The affair, which became public after Robert Adair’s killing, was a factor in the divorce of Shapiro and his former wife, Melinda, according to court papers.

Melinda “Mindy” Shapiro said she filed for divorce in June when she found a hotel bill for a daytime rendezvous, allegedly between her husband and Jean Adair, a longtime patient.

The court filings, which also document a bitter custody fight over the Shapiros’ two children, contain allegations and counter-allegations involving the Shapiro marriage and the killing of Robert Adair.

For instance, Mindy Shapiro said the breakup of her marriage was reasonably smooth in the beginning. Her husband, who reportedly earns nearly $250,000 a year as an orthopedic surgeon, made child-support payments, and the two even dined together occasionally.

“Things only began to turn ugly when I began to learn about Ms. Adair’s alleged involvement in the bludgeoning death of her late husband just prior to his attempt to divorce her,” she said in a court declaration filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Mindy Shapiro, who claimed in court papers that she obtained a restraining order against her ex-husband and Jean Adair, also accused Adair of threatening her and her two children.

“Ms. Adair told me, ‘You’re going to be a dead mom,’ ” the declaration stated. “On another telephone conversation [Jean Adair] said to me, ‘Your children and you are dead.’ ”

Lawyers for both Jean Adair and Michael Shapiro have sought to portray Mindy Shapiro as an emotionally unstable and jealous woman who is concocting lies about her ex-husband and his new lover.

“She’s doing everything she can to make his life miserable,” said Michael Shapiro’s lawyer, Arthur Soll. “It’s a nightmare. It has cost [Michael Shapiro] a bloody fortune to stamp out the brush fires this lady has been starting.”

In August, Mindy Shapiro hired day laborers to picket outside her husband’s Encino medical office. One of the men carried a sign reading, “Dr. Shapiro sleeps with his patients. One lover--Jean Adair--is a murder 1 suspect in the death of her husband,” according to court papers.

Last month Jean Adair sought a restraining order against Mindy Shapiro after Adair found a threatening message written in letters clipped from a magazine and left on her car. The note read, in part, “He’s mine again. . . . Make very certain you watch over your back.”

But Mindy Shapiro isn’t the only one making accusations.

In one court document, Michael Shapiro seeks to link his ex-wife with the killing of Robert Adair.

“Prior to Mr. Adair’s death . . . [Melinda Shapiro] made many threats to me regarding Ms. Adair. [She] stated several times that she had plans to ‘destroy’ Ms. Adair’s life, and said that she had ‘connections’ and had made ‘arrangements,’ ” Michael Shapiro stated in the court papers. “During one conversation [Melinda Shapiro] said, ‘Wait and see what I got you for your birthday.’ Nov. 5, 1996, the day Ms. Adair was beaten and Mr. Adair was murdered was indeed two days before my birthday.”

Detectives have questioned both Shapiros extensively and said neither are suspects.

Michael Shapiro, who said he is now only friends with Adair, described the past year as “crazy, I can tell you that.”

During a brief telephone interview, he said, “Sometimes I don’t know what the hell is going on here.”

But he defended Adair, saying, “I have a firm belief that she is a victim in all of this.”

Ferguson, the LAPD detective, said the motive in the case is unknown.

But Sutcliffe, Robert Adair’s mother, said her son was planning to take the couple’s two children and move to Las Vegas.

“He was planning to divorce her,” she said.

Sutcliffe said her son called the morning he died and told her about “a big blowout” with Jean the day before. At lunch, on the last day of his life, he had planned to meet with his wife to talk things over, Sutcliffe said.

That was the last she heard from him.

Meanwhile, Ferguson said the investigation is “open and active,” but believes an arrest is imminent.

The most formidable roadblock, she said, remains Jean Adair’s refusal to give a statement.

“It’s very frustrating,” Ferguson said. “But she obviously has her reasons.”

Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Beth Shuster contributed to this story.