Rawlings’ Death Believed Unrelated to Alleged Scams

The slaying of entrepreneur Christopher Rawlings two weeks ago was probably unrelated to the alleged telemarketing scam federal authorities say he was running before he was killed, an LAPD detective said Monday.

Det. Rick Swanston, supervisor of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley homicide unit, said detectives have uncovered no evidence to suggest that the 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 two assailants in the Rawlings case were 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 them as Rawlings’ attackers, sources said.

The men in the photo lineups were John Dickens and Timothy Griffieth, who were arrested Friday in connection with the alleged telemarketing fraud and who 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 confirm that one had taken place.

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

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

Blatt, 61, was roused from his bed, blindfolded and bound. The robbers then ransacked his house and fled with money and valuables.

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 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 automobile, with him stuffed in the trunk. A high-speed pursuit ended with a crash on Tampa Avenue. The kidnappers fled on foot. Rawlings was ejected from the trunk and suffered severe head injuries. He died of his injuries 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 other 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.