Mine Shaft Drill Revives Old Search

As part of a training exercise that focused on an unsolved murder case, a sheriff’s search-and-rescue team descended to the bottom of a 100-foot mine shaft Saturday to look for the bodies of seven San Fernando Valley residents missing for 18 years.

The case involves four members of a Northridge family who disappeared in 1982.

Harvey Rader, a former Reseda car dealer, was tried three times in the deaths of Sol Salomon, his wife, Elaine, their 9-year-old son, Mitchell, and Elaine Salomon’s daughter, Michalle, 15.

Rader was acquitted in 1992 after two mistrials. But in an earlier statement to police, Rader’s cousin said he helped Rader bury the family in the desert near Acton.

Over the years authorities have periodically searched for the bodies in the high desert hills.

“We’ve never been satisfied with our search of the area,” said Det. Dennis P. Kilcoyne of the Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide division, which is leading the investigation. “We’ve been out here dozens of times” since 1982.

Police said Rader is a suspect in the 1982 disappearance and presumed deaths of Peter and Joan Davis of Granada Hills and Ron Adeeb of Burbank. Authorities believe all the cases stemmed from business disputes.

Police asked the search-and-rescue team, which was practicing mine rescues, to search a mine shaft just south of the Antelope Valley Freeway, off Escondido Canyon Road and Red Rover Mine Road.

The search was not prompted by new information in the case, Kilcoyne said, but was part of a long-running effort to find the bodies.

No human remains were found Saturday, but searchers did recover fabric scraps that will be analyzed, Kilcoyne said.