Ventura Man Indicted in ’93 Hueneme Rape, Slaying

Using DNA evidence, the Ventura County Grand Jury indicted a Ventura man Wednesday on charges of raping, then strangling a Port Hueneme woman in 1993.

The grand jury indicted Michael Joseph Schultz, 31, in the rape and killing of Cynthia Burger, 44, who was found in her bathtub as flames engulfed her two-story condominium.

Prosecutors said that because Schultz allegedly raped Burger before the homicide and then burglarized her home, he will be eligible for the death penalty. Authorities have not yet decided if they will seek capital punishment.

Developments, which authorities would not reveal, were enough to push Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Totten back into the courtroom with the cold case, which was one of Totten’s last as a criminal prosecutor seven years ago.

“The fact that it wasn’t solved always troubled me,” Totten said. “So it’s nice to see something like this come to a resolution.”

“It’s great,” added Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Simon, who is co-counsel on the case. “Especially when someone thinks they got away with it for so long.”

Before authorities brought him back to Ventura County, Schultz was serving a five-year sentence at a state prison near Sonora for a 1996 burglary and the battery of two Ventura police officers while on drugs.

Sources close to the investigation say DNA evidence played a key role in the indictment, but prosecutors declined comment on the physical evidence.

“I’ll just say that some additional evidence recently came to light within the last two months that enabled us to identify” Schultz, Totten said.

It is the second time in two weeks authorities have reportedly used DNA evidence to help break an old homicide case.

Earlier this month, Orange County sheriff’s deputies said biological evidence collected in six slayings in Ventura and Orange counties revealed that a single serial killer was responsible. Authorities believe the still unidentified man is also responsible for four deaths in Santa Barbara County.

Among the suspected serial killer’s alleged victims were prominent Ventura attorney Lyman Smith, 43, and his wife, Charlene, who were bludgeoned to death in their home in March 1980.

The state Department of Justice has collected DNA evidence in violent crime and sexual cases since 1995, and Schultz’s two battery convictions would have triggered such tests, state officials said. But they couldn’t say why it took four years for prosecutors to link his DNA to the Burger killing.

However, officials said the state has a backlog of 50,000 DNA samples that have not been processed. And differences in DNA testing have made matching certain samples impossible. A new uniform testing system is pending.

A state law that went into effect in July required all parolees from the state prison system to be DNA tested.

The indictment surprised Burger’s former co-workers at Gold Coast Acura in Ventura, which is owned by her father, Hadrian, and where she was a customer relations manager.

“I don’t know that we ever lost hope,” said Pat Murphy, the dealership’s general manager. “Detectives working on it way back when said the way they would eventually solve this was that he would get in trouble someplace and they’d match DNA.”

Co-workers said Burger, who was single and had no children, was a Christian, a quiet and pretty woman who always dressed professionally. Murphy said he and Burger moved from a Lompoc dealership to Ventura County in 1986 to open Gold Coast Acura.

About 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1993, firefighters called to Burger’s condo on Outlook Grove found the unit engulfed in flames. Inside, authorities found Burger’s body in the bathtub and initially thought she had died of smoke inhalation. Authorities later determined she had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

Her killing was the third in Port Hueneme during a three-month period in 1993. Norma Rodriguez, a 32-year-old mother of two, was found strangled in the living room of her home on East B Street in June. Three weeks later, Beatrice Bellis, an 87-year-old deaf woman, was stabbed to death in her senior citizens apartment on East Scott Street. At the time, authorities suspected the killings were the work of a serial killer.

Now, however, authorities don’t believe the three cases are connected, Totten said. Prosecutors declined to say whether DNA evidence had excluded Schultz as a suspect in the other cases; no suspects have ever been arrested in those killings.

Although authorities said little about Schultz, court records show a long record of run-ins with police.

Schultz received a five-year, four-month prison sentence for his last offense, for which he pleaded guilty in October 1996 to three felonies, burglary, battery with injury and battery on a peace officer. In the same case, he served time in Ventura County Jail for resisting arrest and being under the influence of a controlled substance.

The same court records show that Schultz broke into the satellite campus of Cal State Northridge in Ventura in August 1996 and was caught using a hammer to break into a change machine inside one of the school’s break rooms.

In an ensuing scuffle, Schultz attacked two local police officers and broke the knee of one.

During his appeal, prosecutors said it was amazing that no one was killed during the arrest, according to the court records.

At the time of sentencing, Schultz had a felony conviction for a residential burglary that occurred in September 1992.

Schultz will appear in court today to enter a plea to the charges.

Murphy said it will be a relief to see someone finally facing trial in Burger’s death. “It’s been a long time with no activity. Now the rest is up to the justice system.”

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Correspondent Holly J. Wolcott contributed to this report.