Victim Tells Police Ex-Husband Attacked Her

After waking from a coma, 48-year-old Linda Lou Morrisset told detectives her ex-husband was the man who bludgeoned her in the head last month and left her near death lying in a hallway of her Santa Rosa Valley home, authorities said Wednesday.

Lee R. Mannheimer, 56, a Westlake businessman who divorced Morrisset in 1994, has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. He was a subject of an investigation six years ago into a murder-for-hire plot against her.

Authorities said Wednesday that Mannheimer was a prime suspect from the start, and that their suspicions were confirmed when Morrisset awoke from her coma and began talking.

“We have a positive identification by Mrs. Morrisset that her ex-husband was the attacker,” said Eric Nishimoto, a spokesman for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

“We saw him as a viable suspect early on given their past history and his current relationship with the victim,” Nishimoto said. “Their relationship, even when they were married and then after they were divorced, was at best described to be strained.”

While investigators released no details about a possible motive, relatives said child custody issues were an ongoing source of tension between the two, who share custody of their 9-year-old son.

Standing outside the hospital room Wednesday where her daughter is recovering from head surgery, Morrisset’s mother said Mannheimer has been angry for years over having to share custody of the child and frequently fought with Morrisset over such issues.

Despite Mannheimer’s arrest, the mother said family members are still fearful.

“We are very concerned about her safety,” said the mother, who declined to give her name.

Morrisset was found by her family’s nanny lying unconscious on the floor of her Blanchard Road home about 10 a.m. Sept. 12. She had been severely beaten in the head with a blunt object and was hospitalized in critical condition for several days.

Authorities are calling the attack an attempted homicide. They said no signs of forcible entry were found in the Morrissets’ home, and they are unsure what type of weapon was used in the beating.

Morrisset’s current husband, accountant Richard Morrisset, was out of town at the time, though the couple’s 3-year-old son was in the home.

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On Monday, investigators arrested Mannheimer and searched his five-bedroom house in Westlake and the offices of his Chatsworth business looking for possible evidence. Authorities removed several items that are being considered as possible weapons, Nishimoto said.

Mannheimer was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, but prosecutors were still reviewing the case and had not filed criminal charges. Therefore, Mannheimer was rearrested at the county jail and remains held in lieu of $2-million bail.

Bail was set unusually high, authorities said, because Mannheimer has traveled extensively overseas, has family ties and friends in Germany, and is considered a flight risk.

This is not the first time authorities have considered Mannheimer a criminal suspect.

In July 1993, Northern California authorities investigated him for allegedly trying to hire two men to kill his spouse, then Linda Lou Mannheimer, after she filed for divorce.

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The investigation started when Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies received a cryptic message from an FBI informant saying he had been offered $10,000 to kill a woman in Southern California.

At the time, Mannheimer was president of PerfectData, a large computer products firm in Simi Valley. Authorities told Linda Mannheimer of the threat on her life and placed her in hiding just three days before she was supposed to be killed. They later arrested John Herbert Judd Jr., 49, a Placer County electronics technician whom investigators believe hired the informant to kill the woman.

An investigator with the Placer County district attorney’s office said Wednesday that Judd was charged on Aug. 20, 1993, with two felonies: solicitation to commit murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

The investigator said the case was dismissed in January 1994 over jurisdictional issues and and then referred to Ventura County authorities.

“I think at the time we were waiting to see whether they would proceed,” said supervising investigator Robert Goebel.

Ventura County prosecutors did not file charges.

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Mannheimer and one of his employees at PerfectData, sales representative Anthony Francis Gigliotti, were also under investigation after Judd’s arrest.

But ultimately the investigation against all three men was dropped. Prosecutors have declined to explain the decision. But an attorney for Gigliotti said at the time that the men were hired to gather information about Linda Mannheimer, but not to kill her.

At a news conference Wednesday, Nishimoto said Morrisset is conscious and able to speak. It is unknown, however, whether the bludgeoning has left her with any permanent disabilities.

“We were concerned for Mrs. Morrisset’s well-being,” Nishimoto said. “We were especially concerned that whoever committed the attack was still out there.”

Authorities believe Mannheimer was the only person involved in the Sept. 12 attack, despite accounts from Mannheimer’s au pair that his employer and his son were home watching television the evening before the attack and the next morning.

“We did get that information,” Nishimoto said. “But based on our information, we’re confident we have the right person.”

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Wilson and Dirmann are Times staff writers; Wolcott is a Times Community News reporter.