Questions Linger in Couple’s Slaying

A Huntington Beach couple shot to death on a deserted mountain highway Saturday night may have been victims of a carjacking, an Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman said Monday.

Jim Amormino said investigators are trying to determine if someone commandeered the car in which Dr. Kenneth Stahl and his wife, Carolyn Oppy-Stahl, left a South County restaurant. However, Amormino said investigators have no solid leads and a carjacking is only one possible motive.

“It’s a pretty bizarre case with several unanswered questions: Why were they going east on the Ortega Highway at that time of night when they lived north?” Amormino said. “We don’t know.”

Stahl, 57, and Oppy-Stahl, 44, an optometrist, were shot several times with a weapon of unknown caliber. Investigators have determined that the couple had spent the evening at a restaurant in San Juan Capistrano or San Clemente, celebrating Oppy-Stahl’s birthday, which was Friday, Amormino said.

The bodies were found inside the couple’s 1996 Dodge Stratus at 10:32 p.m. by a security guard for Rancho Mission Viejo. The vehicle was parked with its engine running next to a call box on the shoulder of the eastbound California 74, about 1 1/2 miles east of the entrance to Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park. Records show the couple did not use the call box, Amormino said.

In addition to the possibility of a carjacking, investigators are considering whether Stahl and Oppy-Stahl were the victims of an angry motorist.

“Road rage is another possibility. Maybe somebody cut them off, and they went to the call box to report it. We’re looking at everything,” Amormino said.

Investigators are puzzled by the absence of shell casings at the crime scene, he said. This suggests that the shooter or shooters used a revolver or took the time to recover the casings.

On Monday, sheriff’s officials asked for help from anyone who may have been driving on California 74 at the time of the murders. Amormino said investigators have received a couple of leads but declined to comment further.

As Stahl’s family worked Monday to arrange a burial and memorial service for the couple, his mother, Bobbie Stahl-Polley, said sheriff’s investigators have uncovered “clues that we can’t talk about.”

She and Stahl’s sisters--Jackie Bartholomew, Diana Tigner and Tammera Stahl-Parham--struggled Monday to explain the couple’s deaths. They said it was unusual for him to drive so far away to dinner when he was on call from Huntington Beach Hospital, as he was Saturday night.

“That’s also puzzling. I was concerned that he was so far away from his call service,” Stahl-Polley said. “Usually he was [within] 15 minutes of his call service.”

“We’re absolutely stymied by this,” Stahl-Parham said. “It doesn’t make sense. He was a very conservative driver. Very cautious. We have all those questions. [But] we need to put my brother and Carolyn to rest.”