Jailhouse Letter Links Suspect to 2 Killings

Penniless and behind bars on a probation violation while police investigated him in the murder of a witness, Randy Williams began to stew about his miserable situation.

So he took pen to paper and dashed off an angry two-page letter to his pal, Kenneth Leighton, the man who authorities allege tried to make burglary charges go away by getting Williams to kill the principal witness against him.

“I guess I should have just flaked out. It seems it would be a lot better,” Williams wrote. “For you know I would still be on probation if it weren’t for the new . . . charges, that came from being there for you.”

The letter, introduced as evidence Friday in a preliminary hearing on murder charges against the duo, reveals for the first time the evidence tying Leighton to the crimes.

Both are accused of killing a witness, crimes that could carry the death penalty.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Duarte said Williams and Leighton discussed the letter during subsequent telephone conversations, and Leighton reassured Williams that police had no evidence against him in the slaying of James Navaroli and Navaroli’s girlfriend, April Mahoney.

What authorities had, LAPD homicide Det. Steve Galeria testified Friday, was Mahoney’s identification of Williams as the gunman as she lay dying in a hospital bed.

Galeria said that on Nov. 7, two days after she was shot and critically wounded, one bullet ripping through her spinal cord, Mahoney briefly regained consciousness and told police, her mother and sister that “Randy” had shot her.

Two days later, he said, he showed her six photographs, a photographic lineup commonly called a six-pack, and she identified Williams as the man who shot her.

“She had a tube in her throat. She had tubes in her arms and they were tied to the bed so she wouldn’t remove the IVs,” Galeria said. “She wasn’t able to speak or point.”

To aid her, the detective said he pointed to one picture at a time and asked her: “Is this the guy?”

He said she shook her head no to each of the first four. When she got to the fifth picture, which was Williams, Galeria said, she nodded yes.

“Her eyes began to tear up,” Galeria said, “and she appeared visibly shaken.” He said he asked her whether Williams had shot them over the “problems” with Leighton, referring to the burglary, and she nodded again.

Mahoney hung on for weeks longer but died Christmas Eve.

Municipal Judge Lloyd Nash allowed the unusual testimony as a dying declaration over the objection of defense lawyers who complained that the victim lived nearly two months and was not asked during the impromptu hospital interview whether she believed she was dying at the time.

Deputy Public Defender Michael Gottlieb and Henry Hall of the Alternate Public Defender’s Office will begin cross-examining Galeria on Monday, when the hearing continues.

“There are a whole bunch of people who wanted to kill [Navaroli],” Hall said.

He said the victims were ripping off drug dealers and had snitched on 15 drug dealers the year before to get out of their own drug-dealing charges. Hall accused authorities of leaving out a lot of information that shows the murder was more likely related to drugs.

“It sounds like a drug rip-off, that’s what the first officers on the scene thought,” Hall said.

Navaroli worked in Leighton’s muffler shop, and the defendant let him live on the premises in a loft with his girlfriend as partial compensation.

In August 1998, thousands of dollars in car parts were stolen from two local businesses, and one of the victims told police Leighton might be responsible.

Burglary detectives recovered some stolen shock absorbers from Leighton’s warehouse, but the key evidence came from Navaroli.

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Navaroli told police he was at Leighton’s muffler shop when the stolen parts were brought in and that Leighton told him about the burglaries.

After Navaroli agreed to cooperate with police, he and Mahoney were threatened and kicked out of Leighton’s property, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing.

Navaroli and Mahoney were gunned down outside the home they rented in the West Hills neighborhood.

Police said markings on one of the shell casings found at the crime scene matched those in others found on Leighton’s property before the crime, showing they had once been in the same gun, Galeria testified.

A friend who told police she let Williams stay with her for a few weeks after the murder said the defendant told her about the murder but gave various stories as to who did it.

During one conversation, the woman told police, Williams said “a guy named Kenny who owns a shop” hired hit men to kill Navaroli and his girlfriend. The justification she was given, Galeria testified, was “because they’d turned state’s evidence and Kenny was going to get even with them.”

But Hall said the woman’s statements show that Williams was only assuming that and that he later changed his mind and said it was probably a drug hit.

Police arrested Williams on suspicion of murder in December and learned he was wanted on a violation of probation in Ventura County on burglary charges. He was sent back to prison, where guards recorded telephone calls and reviewed his mail and reported back to LAPD detectives.

Police also interviewed another man who essentially took Navaroli’s job and loft in Leighton’s shop after he was killed and later implicated Leighton in the murder to authorities after an argument with Leighton escalated and he was thrown out of the shop.

The man told police that during an argument Leighton had threatened him, saying, “you’ll end up like those other two who were here,” referring to the victims, Galeria testified.

Leighton also allegedly bragged about killing the victims and said: “You’re sleeping in a dead man’s bed.”