Clue Offers New Hope for Solving 1977 Murder

Carol Steindler-Ferris has waited a long time for a miracle, and now, on the 22nd anniversary of her father’s murder, she may have one.

Using new technology, police matched a fingerprint lifted from the door of the gold Cadillac in which boxing promoter Howie Steindler was found dead.

The print led Mike Mejia, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, to other promising leads. Mejia notified Steindler’s family and, together, they persuaded the Los Angeles City Council to offer a $25,000 reward.

Suddenly, a case that many except for Steindler’s still-grieving family had forgotten, was commanding publicity again, the sort of publicity that Mejia believes could finally bring justice.

Steindler-Ferris, though encouraged by the recent turn of events, still mourns for her loss that night, she said.

“My father was always there for me in every way--mentally and physically and monetarily, every way you can think,” she said, surrounded in her Chatsworth home by carefully preserved memorabilia from her father’s career. “I was so devastated. I just felt so empty. He was such a big part of my life and my son’s life.”

Telling her son, who was 14 at the time, was the hardest thing she’s ever done, said the husky-voiced, energetic blond who, at her son’s urging, took on the management of Steindler’s Los Angeles gym after his death.

“My son, my little son, said: ‘You gotta take the gym. You gotta do this for grandpa. I’ll help you,’ ” she recalled with a tearful smile.

Steindler-Ferris took on the task because she believed she would find the answer there. “I went down there to find the murderers,” she said.

For 10 years she kept a foot in two worlds--one in which she was a Little League mother, and the other in which she was a licensed boxing manager--hoping to find a hint or a clue.

After years of lighting memorial candles, Steindler-Ferris and her son, former Mets and Cardinals relief pitcher Mark Davis, are still waiting for the missing pieces of the puzzle that will lead to the killer.

“I’m just hoping that somebody with the minutest bit of information will come forward so I can get some closure,” Steindler-Ferris said.

On March 9, 1977, Howie Steindler closed his Main Street Gym, where such champions as Muhammad Ali, Rocky Marciano, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis once trained.

The fiery Steindler, on whom the Burgess Meredith character in the “Rocky” movies was based, drove to his Encino home, where his wife, Ann, waited.

A witness reported seeing Steindler in front of his home involved in an argument with two men who punched him several times, forced him into the back seat of his car and drove away. Steindler, who was 72, was later found beaten and suffocated in the abandoned car near the Laurel Canyon Boulevard onramp of the eastbound Ventura Freeway.

More than 1,000 people overflowed Steindler’s funeral at Hollywood Cemetery Chapel, where former boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson gave the eulogy.

For more than 30 years, beginning in 1951, denizens of the boxing world had frequented Steindler’s skid row gym, the site of numerous TV and film location shots before it was torn down in November 1984.

Nine months after the slaying, Steindler’s widow received his wallet--containing his personal papers, credit cards and car key--in the mail, postmarked Encino. Several hundred dollars in cash he was known to have been carrying was missing. There was nothing else. Ann Steindler died in 1987.

Because of damage to Steindler’s Cadillac, police believed then, as they do now, that he was the victim of a bump-and-rob, in which a victim’s car is rear-ended, and the victim is robbed after pulling over.

Police at the time queried local pawnshops for items stolen from Steindler that night, including a watch and a diamond ring, one of only two of that design made. It was 14-karat gold, with a diamond inset and a boxing glove. A gold necklace and a second ring also were stolen. The items were never recovered.

Mejia searched through old police files for clues and found that two similar and also unsolved slayings were committed within about three months of Steindler’s death. Charles Eugene Smith was robbed, shot to death and left in his car on the Hollywood Freeway. James Arakawa, a garment district businessman, was robbed and killed within blocks of the gym.

The recent fingerprint match belonged to a parking attendant from a Los Angeles restaurant that Steindler was known to frequent. The attendant, who is not a suspect, helped lead Mejia and his partner to people who might be.

“We feel that we’re talking to the people who have knowledge or were involved, but short of any physical evidence, we can’t proceed,” Mejia said.

The possible suspects, who currently are serving extended prison terms, were known to hang out at the Waldorf and Belmont bars near the gym. They were arrested at the time of Steindler’s killing for similar crimes. Composite drawings from witness descriptions in the three cases are nearly identical.

Steindler-Ferris hopes the reward will help jar someone’s memory--or conscience.

“A lot of people are afraid to come forward, and I can’t blame them,” she said. “They don’t want to get involved. But they have to sit back and remember: This could happen to you.”