Police Find No Link Between Slaying, Scam

The slaying of entrepreneur Christopher Rawlings two weeks ago in Woodland Hills was probably unrelated to the alleged telemarketing scam federal authorities say he was running before he was killed, a Los Angeles police detective said Monday.

Det. Rick Swanston, supervisor of the West Valley homicide unit, said detectives have uncovered no evidence to suggest that Rawlings’ death was connected to his role in what a federal prosecutor described as a fraud ring in which investors were bilked out of $19 million.

Rather, Swanston said, the evidence detectives have collected strongly suggests that he was the victim of a botched follow-home robbery.

“We’re pretty confident that’s what happened,” Swanston said. “We’re leaning heavily in that direction.”

Police have said the assailants in the Rawlings case were two African American men.

Witnesses were recently shown photo arrays containing pictures of two men who were associated with Rawlings, but they were unable to identify either of the men as one of Rawlings’ attackers, sources said.

The men in the photo lineups were John Dickens and Timothy Griffieth, who were arrested last Friday in connection with the alleged telemarketing fraud and whom one investigator described as the only African American men in Rawlings’ inner circle.

“There were no hits,” one source said of the lineup. “Nobody recognized these guys.”

Swanston refused to answer questions about the lineup or to even confirm that one had taken place.

With respect to the follow-home-robbery theory, he said, detectives are investigating the “strong possibility” that Rawlings’ attackers committed a similar crime earlier this month.

In that case, police said, movie producer Daniel H. Blatt was robbed at gunpoint by two men who broke into his house in Sherman Oaks as he slept.

Blatt, 61, was roused from his bed, blindfolded and bound before the robbers ransacked his house and fled with money and other valuables, police said.

Swanston said several elements of the crime matched those in the Rawlings case--as did the description of the robbers. He said a composite sketch of one of the men who allegedly robbed and kidnapped Rawlings is expected to be released as soon as today.

Rawlings’ wife, Barbie, called police to the couple’s Woodland Hills home Feb. 8 after she looked into the garage and found two masked men attacking her husband.

Officers arrived just as the attackers drove away in Rawlings’ Bentley, with him stuffed in the trunk. A high-speed pursuit ended with a crash on Tampa Avenue. The kidnappers fled on foot, but Rawlings was ejected from the trunk and suffered severe head injuries. He died two days later.

Authorities later disclosed that Rawlings was the subject of an FBI fraud investigation at the time of his death. According to court papers filed in support of the arrest of one of his associates, Rawlings and two men were running several telemarketing scams suspected of defrauding hundreds of people, many of whom thought they were investing in record or movie deals. Homicide detectives said at the time that they were investigating whether Rawlings’ business dealings were connected to his slaying.