Simi Man and 3 Others Appear in Court in Slaying of Teenager

Four suspects--one of them from Simi Valley--appeared briefly in court Friday on charges of murder and kidnapping in connection with the execution-style death of a 15-year-old West Hills boy.

At the request of their court-appointed lawyers, the four had their arraignments delayed to next Friday.

William Skidmore, 20, of Simi Valley; Ryan James Hoyt, 21, of West Hills; Jesse Taylor Rugge, 20, of Santa Barbara; and Graham Pressley, 17, of Goleta appeared in a Santa Barbara courtroom, being held in the Aug. 8 death of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz in the rugged hills of the Los Padres National Forest east of Santa Barbara.

A fifth suspect, Jesse James Hollywood, 20, of West Hills, remained a fugitive, authorities said.

The hearing occurred the same day as the funeral for Nicholas, who authorities say was killed two days after he was kidnapped by five young men to put pressure on Nicholas’ half-brother, 22-year-old Benjamin Markowitz. Investigators said the older Markowitz told them he owed one of the suspects, Jesse James Hollywood, $36,000 for marijuana.

About 300 people, perhaps half of them teenagers, packed the chapel at Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills for the boy’s funeral and then trudged up a grassy hill in 90-plus degree heat to witness his burial.

Six young pallbearers carried the casket, three of them weeping as they marched.

“There are deaths, such as this, when we can’t shake an angry finger at God and say, ‘Why?’ ” Rabbi James Lee Kaufman said. “We can only look to ourselves.”

Nicholas would have been a junior at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills this fall. “He always made me laugh,” said 16-year-old Elizabeth Harless of Chatsworth. “Even when I was mad at him, I couldn’t stay mad for long.”

One 17-year-old friend who declined to be identified said: “You wake up and realize that all the drug dealing has to stop, because a nice guy like Nick had to die.”

Drugs apparently were common to the group of friends. Even Nicholas had been caught with marijuana at his former school, Chatsworth High, apparently forcing his transfer to El Camino, according to Santa Barbara sheriff’s officials.

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On Aug. 6, Nicholas was brought to the Santa Barbara home of Barron Rugge, the father of one of the suspects. Rugge, who manages a greenhouse at UC Santa Barbara, told The Times he thought Nicholas was a guest of his son’s and that the younger boy showed no signs of being held against his will during the two days he was there.

The suspects believed they would face kidnapping charges if they released the younger Markowitz, authorities said, so they decided to kill him.

Driving into the mountains that sweep up east of Santa Barbara, three of the suspects--Hoyt, Rugge and Pressley--parked alongside a popular trail that is known as a party spot among area teenagers, authorities said.

Skidmore and Hollywood were not there, authorities said.

Nicholas’ hands were bound with duct tape and he was allegedly forced to walk about a mile along the rugged dirt trail, around boulders and past thick stands of brush, until he reached the spot where the suspects had dug his grave beneath an overarching manzanita bush, investigators said.

Only Hoyt and Rugge accompanied Markowitz, investigators said, with Pressley staying behind in the car. Authorities said they believe Hoyt then fired nine shots in the boy’s head and torso, with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, stopping only after it jammed. Then, he is believed to have thrown the gun on top of Nicholas, who was covered with dirt. Hikers noticed an odor a few days later, leading to the discovery of the body.

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On Friday, a bright orange “X,” painted by sheriff’s investigators, marked a boulder near the makeshift grave, and the odor of death hung in the air.

In court Friday, Pressley was charged as an adult. According to a sheriff’s statement in the court file, Rugge “admitted that he assisted” in the kidnapping and was present when a “co-suspect” killed Markowitz.

Among those in court were Rugge’s parents, Barron and Melissa Rugge, and a couple who appeared to be Pressley’s parents. All appeared distraught and refused comment.

Barron Rugge had previously described himself as “emotionally crushed.”

Authorities said the TEC-9 gun used in the killing is registered to an owner in Mesa, Ariz. They declined to say how the gun came to be in the possession of the killer.

Nor could they answer the deeper questions, which were left for parents and friends of the victim and the suspects.

In east Simi Valley, Skidmore’s neighbors said Friday that the family had moved to a new subdivision named Hope Town five years ago to escape William Skidmore’s group of friends in West Hills.

Carole Crnic, a neighbor of Florinda Skidmore, the suspect’s mother, said that Skidmore told her she uprooted her family “to try to get [William] away from that group of guys. She didn’t like them. They really turned her off. She had to put padlocks on her pantry because they were always going in there to get food.”

“This is devastating,” Crnic added. “She moved here to prevent this exact thing from happening.”

Earlier this year, Skidmore had etched the name of a Filipino gang onto the door of a Simi Valley holding cell, after his arrest for being under the influence of a controlled substance. He also told officials that his gang name was Capone, according to Ventura County prosecutor Bill Redmond.

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Sheriff’s investigators said there were signs that some of the suspects had ties to the white supremacist movement, although they discounted that as a motive in the crime.

Rugge’s brother-in-law owns a downtown Santa Barbara tattoo parlor, called the Iron Cross, that displays Nazi and white supremacist paraphernalia. Store workers, who declined to identify themselves, said Friday that Rugge had frequented the shop.

Ryan Gunches, who played baseball with Hollywood at El Camino Real High, said he has been friends with Hollywood and Nicholas for years. He lived near Nicholas and saw Hollywood as recently as 10 days ago.

“Jesse, like, never took anything seriously. He was always mellow,” Gunches said. “It’s weird, because I know the victim and the people who did it, too. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, but I’m not going to ever forget it, either. It will always be in my head. It’s just too weird.”

The last time he saw Hollywood “he was cool as usual. He was always cool with me. He wasn’t like some guy plotting to kill someone,” Gunches said.

Vicky Hoyt was insistent that her son, Ryan, was “loving, kind [and] sweet,” not the sort of young man who could have killed someone.

When she spoke to him after his arrest, she said, he was laughing. “He said he did not do this crime. He’s not capable of it. My family will vouch for him; his father will.”

Vicky Hoyt said she read a comment by Susan Markowitz in Friday’s Times in which the victim’s mother said: “I wouldn’t want to be the parents of the person that took my baby’s life. I would not be able to live with myself. My situation is better than theirs.”

“Well,” Hoyt said, “my situation is better than theirs. My son did not do this.”

She added that she was grieving “because my son does not belong in jail and I feel so, so, so sad, and I am sorry for their loss.”

Young people at Nicholas’ funeral said he was, for the most part, the clean-cut, smiling young man portrayed in a photograph released by police. He was, they said, a peer counselor, volunteering to talk classmates through their problems.

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Benjamin Markowitz, however, did not attend the funeral out of respect for his stepmother, Susan Markowitz.

“I expect her to just reach across the table and wring my neck,” he said Friday. “I wish it was me. I wish I was the one that was gone.”

In an interview aired Friday on KNBC-TV Channel 4, he said, “It’s my fault that my 15-year-old brother’s dead.” He said during the interview that he owed Hollywood only $1,200.

His eyes welling with tears, he said he had known the suspects since childhood. “I mean, I couldn’t even fathom anyone doing that, especially people that I grew up with, laughed with, cried with,” he said. “I mean, these are, like, my friends.”

Several teenagers interviewed at the funeral said there is a large drug underworld in West Hills that parents don’t know about. Two girls said they know of junior high school kids who sell marijuana.

“It’s a way for them to make money, good money,” one of the girls said. “It’s huge in the Valley. Parents don’t even know half of the things that go on.”

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Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Margaret Talev, Martha A. Willman, Karima A. Haynes, Mitchell Landsberg and Zanto Peabody; Times Community News reporters Catherine Blake and Gail Davis; and Times librarian Ron Weaver contributed to this story.