Couple Found Shot to Death Along Road

A Huntington Beach couple were shot and killed late Saturday after apparently stopping their car by an emergency call box on a desolate stretch of highway in the mountains east of San Juan Capistrano, authorities said.

Orange County sheriff’s homicide investigators said Dr. Kenneth C. Stahl, 57, an anesthesiologist, and Carolyn Oppy-Stahl, 44, an optometrist, were found dead from multiple gunshot wounds. Their bodies were slumped in the car.

Stahl’s mother, Bobbie C. Stahl-Polley, said late Sunday that her daughter-in-law turned 44 on Friday and that the couple had driven to San Juan Capistrano the following evening to mark the occasion.

Deputies were summoned to the scene at 10:32 p.m. by a Mission Viejo Ranch security guard who was on patrol. Sheriff’s officials said the guard found the couple’s 1996 Dodge Stratus parked on the shoulder of Ortega Highway with its engine running about 1.5 miles east of the entrance to Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park. The guard saw that the driver’s window had been shattered.

On Sunday, Dr. Carl Hartman, Oppy-Stahl’s anguished employer, said the Stahls were “a wonderful and ideal” couple.

“There are some people whom you know in your life who are too perfect to be real, and this is them. I can’t conceive of anybody disliking them,” said Hartman, an owner of the Lakewood Eye Physicians and Surgeons clinic, where Oppy-Stahl had worked for about four years.

Sheriff’s Lt. Dennis DeMaio said investigators were not sure of a motive for the killing. Although authorities said the victims were found in an area known as a “lover’s lane,” the car was parked next to a call box on the dirt shoulder of the winding two-lane highway that connects San Juan Capistrano and Lake Elsinore.

A search for weapons in the area was unsuccessful, said Sheriff’s Lt. Steve Fauchier.

Autopsies were performed Sunday, but authorities declined to release any details, including the caliber of the weapon used.

Stahl, a California native, graduated in 1968 from the University of Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kansas City, Mo.

In the mid-1980s, he had an Irvine practice specializing in osteopathic medicine and anesthesiology. In June 1985, Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Stahl to a three-year term on the state Board of Osteopathic Examiners.

Neighbors at the Pacific Ranch community where the couple lived said Stahl had worked at Pacifica Hospital in Huntington Beach, which closed last November, and had an adult son from a previous marriage. Oppy-Stahl, a Michigan native, did not have children, neighbors said.

“They were very meticulous . . . quiet people,” said Randy Budihas, who rented to the Stahls for about a year before the couple bought another home in the gated community.

Budihas and other neighbors said the Stahls worked long hours, up to six days a week, and were rarely home. But the couple appeared to enjoy their hectic lifestyle, neighbors said.

“They seemed like they were very happy people,” said Carol de la Torre. “But she worked a lot. I think her life is pretty much devoted to her practice. I just can’t think of a worse person for it to happen to than to her.”

Hartman said Oppy-Stahl was “the best optometrist we ever had” and remembered her as always having a smile.