Husband of Slain Woman Sues

The husband of a Lancaster prison guard killed on the Riverside Freeway a year ago has filed a lawsuit alleging that the Anaheim Police Department and the California Highway Patrol harassed him.

In a lawsuit filed Jan. 15 in Orange County Superior Court, Nuzzio Begaren accuses Anaheim police and California Highway Patrol officers of treating him “as if he was a criminal” in the wake of his wife’s death. Among other things, the lawsuit contends, they placed a tracking device on his car and, during a traffic stop, dragged him from his car at gunpoint.

Begaren was riding with his wife, Elizabeth Begaren, on Jan. 17, 1998, when the woman was shot to death at an Anaheim freeway onramp. He later told authorities that they were forced off the road by men in a dark Oldsmobile that had been following them. He said the men robbed them of $4,800 and shot his wife when they saw her badge.

Anaheim police, however, expressed skepticism regarding Nuzzio Begaren’s account and said they had not ruled him out as a suspect in the killing. Begaren had taken out a $1-million life insurance policy on his wife in the months before she was killed, police and family members said.