Father’s Hope of Finding Daughter Fading

Michael and Karen Huster’s 18-year marriage was as fractious as the custody battle for their two children.

But Michael Huster said he refused to believe his wife was capable of harming their daughter, even after they divorced in Oregon and 10-year-old Elisabeth Anne disappeared in 1996. Even after Oregon authorities issued a murder indictment against Karen Huster, and she fled.

Huster, who has acknowledged hitting his wife, said he thought Karen was just hiding the girl from him.

Not until 10 days ago, when police found dismembered human remains in two freezers in a Canoga Park apartment occupied by Karen Huster, 41, did Michael Huster say he had begun to lose hope for his daughter.

“It’s becoming more plausible to me that she has harmed her,” he said last week from his home in Pleasanton, Calif.

Court records and interviews with family members, neighbors and investigators show the steady meltdown of the Huster household, culminating in the disappearance--and possible slaying-- of their daughter, allegedly at the hands of Karen Huster.

But police in Los Angeles and Oregon say the gruesome discovery on Nov. 10 in the De Soto Avenue apartment has led them no closer to finding Elisabeth’s body.

Although she has been uncooperative in the search for her daughter, Karen Huster told investigators that she dismembered a man’s body after he died of a heart attack. Thus far, police say they are inclined to believe her.

“There does not seem to be an obvious cause of death,” coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier said. The identity of the body has yet to be confirmed, but the listed tenant of the unit, 73-year-old James Cameron, is missing.

Cameron may have been supporting Karen Huster financially, but details of their relationship are “somewhat nebulous,” Los Angeles Police Det. Mike Oppelt said.

She was arrested Nov. 10 and is being held at Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office has yet to charge Huster and referred the case back to police for further investigation. Mutilation of a corpse is a felony in California.

Efforts to reach Huster or her attorney were unsuccessful.

Apparent Victim Is Described as a Loner

Cameron’s stepson, Craig Faulkner, 44, of Reseda, said they have been estranged and have not talked since last year. He said he did not know Karen Huster and described his stepfather as a temperamental widower of three years. “He was a loner, an intellectual,” Faulkner said. Cameron was also a retired engineer for ITT, an avid golfer, bowler and square-dancer, Faulkner said.

“But since Mom died in 1998, he was a loner,” Faulkner said, adding that his health declined after a stroke last year.

Sierra Nord, who managed the De Soto Avenue property until she moved away in January, said Cameron was a “soft-spoken, quiet man.” She said she never saw Karen Huster or anyone else living with Cameron.

Meanwhile, Oregon authorities say they intend to extradite Huster to stand trial in this Portland suburb for the alleged slaying of Elisabeth.

Michael and Karen Huster met in 1978 when he was a Caltech student. They married the following year and moved to Santa Barbara. In 1980, they had a son, Jonathan. Michael Huster says the marriage “was tumultuous from the beginning.

“She showed herself, very quickly, to be short-tempered and moody,” he said. In court papers filed in Oregon, Karen Huster claimed her husband had a long-term drug problem.

They separated for two years in the mid-1980s and Michael Huster went back to school at UC Davis. His wife, a San Fernando Valley native and a Chatsworth High alumna, moved from Oregon to Northridge to live close to her father and brother.

The Husters reconciled by 1986, when Elisabeth was born, and moved to Northern California before relocating to Beaverton, Ore., in 1994.

“It wasn’t until the 1990s that I got the hint that her mental state was unstable,” Michael Huster said. He recalled a time in Northern California when his wife abandoned their then-13-year-old son at a downtown store miles away from their home. He also described a scene in an Anaheim diner when his wife, frustrated by an inattentive waitress, screamed loud enough to stop every conversation in the establishment.

Neighbors Remember Odd, Volatile Behavior

Michael Huster was not the only one to mention Karen Huster’s bizarre behavior. In their Oregon neighborhood, a tidy, close-knit community of middle-class families, nearby residents spoke of the volatile mother who yelled at her daughter’s playmates and never seemed to leave the house.

“Elisabeth was sweet,” said Karen Thatcher, 42, who lives across the street from the Paisley Drive home the Husters used to own. “But Karen was a little different--not someone you wanted to be neighborly friends with.” Two of Thatcher’s youngest daughters, Haley and Lacey, used to play with Elisabeth, but said they were often afraid of her mother.

“She always gave us weird looks,” said Lacey, 10. “The house was always really messy and Elisabeth would have to do all the housework, like scrubbing the counters and picking up all the chocolate wrappers, and popcorn. Her mom never smiled and she always had her eyebrows down in a frown.”

Karen Huster, Thatcher said, rarely moved from a couch in front of a television. Elisabeth’s hair was usually uncombed and her clothes were old and torn.

Linda Goudge, another neighborhood parent, said: “I liked Elisabeth. She was sensitive--really nice. But my kids were not allowed to go over there.”

Once in a while, Karen Huster would venture out of her house to shout at neighborhood kids for picking on her daughter, Thatcher said.

Both Thatcher and Goudge said they seldom saw Michael Huster at the house. When he was home, Lacey said, the Husters often fought.

Tensions in the Huster household reached a climax in the fall of 1995. Michael Huster was laid off from his job as a researcher for a medical equipment firm. On Nov. 16, 1995, Karen Huster accused her husband of abusing drugs, according to court records. A terrible argument followed, all witnessed by Elisabeth, who was 9 at the time, according to her father and court records.

“He hit me on the shoulder,” Karen Huster wrote in a restraining order she filed in December 1995, “then he spat on me, then hit me across my face. My face was swollen and bruised. It affected my hearing and equilibrium, eyesight, it hurt badly and had dislocated my jaw. I went to a doctor.”

Michael Huster, who stands nearly 7 feet tall and weighs 240 pounds, acknowledged last week that he struck his wife. She is 5-foot-4 and weighs 180 pounds.

“That was the last time I saw Elisabeth,” said Michael Huster, who obtained custody of their son. He found another job in Pleasanton and repeatedly called his wife’s house, but she prevented him from speaking to Elisabeth until the following summer. They spoke on the phone during the summer of 1996.

“I told her that we were trying to make arrangements to visit. I told her I loved her and I gave her my phone number and told her to hide it in case her mother was trying to keep her away from me,” he said. “I tried not to make it into a crisis. I never thought she was in any danger.”

Michael Huster filed for divorce in August 1996. About the same time, Karen Huster told a friend that she was considering killing herself and Elisabeth, according to an Oregon search warrant.

No Explanation for Girl’s Disappearance

Elisabeth was last seen Aug. 31, 1996, at a wedding in Cedar Mill Stake, Ore. Soon after, she failed to attend the first day of school. When neighborhood children asked about Elisabeth, Karen Huster told them she was visiting relatives. She told her son, Jonathan, that Elisabeth was visiting friends when he visited his mother on Thanksgiving in 1996.

“We thought that was strange,” said Michael Huster. “She knew Jonathan was coming and would want to see his sister.”

Michael Huster reported Elisabeth missing on Dec. 23, 1996, and Washington County Sheriff’s Det. John Stratford questioned Karen Huster about her daughter’s whereabouts, but she refused to tell him where Elisabeth was.

Karen Huster fled shortly after that and was arrested in February 1997 in the coastal town of Newport, Ore., for custodial interference. Among other belongings, police seized a newly purchased .22-caliber revolver. The gun had “two expended rounds,” Washington County Sheriff’s Det. Larry McKinney said.

Karen Huster served two years in Oregon State Prison, but refused to reveal her daughter’s whereabouts. During her incarceration, Oregon authorities staged an exhaustive search for Elisabeth and even received advice from FBI “profilers.” In February 1999, Huster was released and detectives still had not found Elisabeth’s body.

That same month, Oregon officials indicted Karen Huster on murder charges. Again, she fled, resurfacing in Canoga Park a week ago.

Stratford flew down to Los Angeles from Oregon on Monday, but his partner, McKinney, said no new murder evidence had emerged as a result of the events in Los Angeles.

“ ‘No-body’ murder trials have been done,” said Washington County Sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Ryon, “but they’re much harder.”

Despite his fading hope, Michael Huster said he harbors no hard feelings toward his ex-wife: “I don’t have the energy for that anymore. Most of all, I feel pity. She’s made things so hard for herself.”