2 Women, Both 18, Held in German Tourist’s Death

Two 18-year-old women are being held on murder charges in the Oct. 12 killing of a German tourist slain during a late-night stroll along Santa Monica’s palm-fringed beachfront, authorities said Wednesday.

Neither woman is accused of firing the weapon that killed 50-year-old Horst Fietze. Police--still searching for the gunman and other suspects--were tight-lipped, having kept one of the arrests secret for a week. They refused to comment on the role either woman allegedly played.

Police have said that Fietze was confronted by three men and a woman bent on robbing him and his wife and another couple near the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.

The one suspect police identified Wednesday is Roshana Latiesha Roberts of Los Angeles, also known by the street name of “Baby Doll.” Her attorney described her as “very upset” by the charges.

The other suspect was a juvenile at the time of the shooting; police would not release her name. She was arraigned Wednesday in Inglewood Juvenile Court. The district attorney’s office has requested that she be tried as an adult, authorities said.

Roberts, who was arrested Nov. 25, was taken to Santa Monica Superior Court on Monday to enter a plea to murder charges, but her arraignment was rescheduled for Dec. 15, according to records filed with the court.

Both women were held without bail.

The case drew international attention because it involved the murder of a foreign tourist in a well-known community that had experienced relatively little violent crime in past years. Fietze, who spoke no English, refused to hand over his bag to the robbers, either out of defiance or miscommunication, police have said.

The charges filed against Roberts include murder with special circumstances, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. She also faces three counts of second-degree robbery. All the charges carry additional, sentence-enhancing allegations that the crimes were committed with a handgun.

Roberts’ attorney, Deputy Public Defender Stuart Gloving, said he had explained the charges to his client in a meeting Monday in a holding cell in the Santa Monica Courthouse.

He declined to discuss her background, saying, “There has been a tremendous amount of publicity concerning this case, both locally and internationally. . . . I don’t want any repercussions for her because of the nature of the case, particularly at this stage.”

The Fietze slaying occurred about the same time as a brief but uncharacteristic war of street gang retaliation in Santa Monica. A few hours before Fietze was shot, a Culver City man en route to a drug rehab center from a birthday party was shot and killed.

Within days, a rash of gang-related violence claimed three more lives and left three wounded. The number of homicides in the city--which had experienced only one in 1997--jumped to six when police found the body of a homeless man on the beach.

Police said Fietze, his wife and another couple were finishing a stroll before returning to their hotel about 9:30 p.m. As they walked along Appian Way, a four-block stretch behind Loews Beach Hotel, several people walked up behind them and demanded money.

The Germans were slow to comply and one of the robbers opened fire with a handgun, striking Fietze, a house painter who had once served in the East German army.

The two couples had been vacationing for three weeks in the United States, stopping in New York and other locations. They had been in Santa Monica for a day and were staying at a budget hotel across the street from the swank resorts that line the oceanfront.

Fietze and his wife were scheduled to fly the next day to their hometown of Loeb in eastern Germany.