Trial Wraps Up for Valencia Man Accused of Slaying His Parents Over a Home Loan

Jeffrey Duvardo told his parents he was a CIA operative who would be killed if he didn’t come up with $50,000 to complete a multimillion-dollar arms deal. The couple believed their 44-year-old son, lending him $30,000 from their meager retirement fund.

Four months later, Don and Mary Ann Duvardo were dead.

In a trial scheduled to wrap up this week in a Northern California courtroom, prosecutors say Duvardo was not a covert agent but a scheming bigamist who stabbed his parents to death after they apparently asked him to repay the November 1998 loan.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Jon Hopkins contends Duvardo was motivated by greed, deception and, ultimately, desperation. Duvardo, he said, wanted to prevent his second wife from learning that he could not sustain their lavish lifestyle in a manicured Valencia community--and that he was still married to his first wife.

Duvardo’s retired parents were killed the morning of March 31, 1999, in their home in Nice, Calif., a lakeside village 93 miles north of San Francisco. Duvardo’s attorney, Stephen Tulanian, says his client was at his job in Long Beach when the slayings took place.

But a sample from a blood-stained towel found in the elder couple’s home contained Duvardo’s DNA, Hopkins said.

“He planned out a secret trip without leaving any traces of his travel, to kill his parents and return home undetected,” Hopkins said. “Unfortunately for him, he left a towel in the sink with his blood on it.”

If convicted in the two-month-long trial in Lake County, Duvardo could be sentenced to death.

Mixed Opinion From Neighbors

For months, Duvardo has been the talk of his former neighborhood, a cluster of cul-de-sacs on the edge of horse country. While some neighbors remember Duvardo as a nice man, others are not surprised by his troubles.

One woman, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, called him “a habitual liar.” She said he falsely told the neighborhood association that his wife died of cancer to explain why he failed to meet a deadline for grooming a lawn.

The woman said her husband once dug up a bag of handguns buried in Duvardo’s yard while the two men were installing a fence. “We thought something was odd,” she said.

Duvardo alternately told friends and co-workers that he was a Navy Seal, an Army Ranger and a Green Beret, Hopkins said. In truth, his professional life was far more mundane--he was a failed policeman who ended up in a desk job at Boeing.

Although estranged from his first wife, Jan Hayden, Duvardo was still married when he wed Molly Koffman in 1993. He told Hayden that his relationship with Koffman was a “spiritual union,” not a marriage, prosecutors said.

Friends say Duvardo doted on Koffman. While she rode show horses at exclusive stables in Saugus, he would drop by to watch and clean up after the horse, said Patty Whalen, a friend of the couple.

Duvardo was eager to show off his knowledge of weapons, often alluding to work in the military and intelligence fields, Whalen said.

Duvardo’s law enforcement experience was scant. As a young man, he spent 15 months with the Newport Beach Police Department, resigning in 1980 for reasons that officials declined to reveal.

A few weeks later, he moved to the Beverly Hills Police Department but was fired after eight months for poor performance, police officials there said, noting that he once sprayed himself with Mace while on the job. Prosecutors added that Duvardo first claimed the spraying had been done by unknown assailants, then admitted later that he had done it himself.

Defendant Told Story of CIA Involvement

In 1997, Koffman fell in love with a two-story Mediterranean-style model house in a planned development on Gentian Court in Valencia, just down the road from the equestrian center. Though Duvardo could not afford the $260,000 house, he bought it the next year, Hopkins said.

To come up with a down payment, Duvardo borrowed $54,000 from a friend at the stables and about $18,000 from two others, Hopkins said. About a week before the largest of the loans came due in November 1998, Duvardo asked his parents to meet him at the home of an aunt and uncle in Newport Beach. There, he spun a tale of a CIA gun-running operation gone wrong, prosecutors said.

“He said that he had been moving millions of dollars worth of arms and explosives in a covert operation in two truckloads to a warehouse in Compton,” Hopkins said. “He said he was $200,000 short.” After coming up with $150,000, all he needed was $50,000, he told them. Without it, he said, he would be killed in a matter of days.

Months later, on April 6, 1999, a neighbor found the bloodied bodies of Don and Mary Ann Duvardo. Mary Ann, 70, was attacked from behind as she sat at a desk. The killer slashed her carotid artery before stabbing her in the head several times.

Don, 76, was stabbed 15 times in the chest as he entered the house after retrieving firewood. His hands were cut to the bone, investigators said, a sign that he desperately fought for his life.

Relatives said the retirees were longtime residents of Santa Monica who moved in the 1980s to Nice, a bucolic resort town of walnut trees and vineyards, to escape Los Angeles traffic.

“They were very good neighbors,” said Joseph Burke, who found the bodies.

Three weeks before the murders, Mary Ann had finished a grueling bout of radiation therapy to fight breast cancer. Don had been having heart trouble, and relatives said the couple had cut back on their expenses because they were worried about medical bills. Hopkins theorizes that the couple asked their son to repay at least part of the loan.

Defense Says Time Sheet Is Alibi

Tulanian, the defense attorney, says Duvardo’s signature on a time sheet on the day the murders took place proves he did not commit the crime. Tulanian also has tried to cast doubt on the prosecutors’ premise that Duvardo was financially desperate, saying he had at least $30,000 available via credit cards and other sources.

And Tulanian has argued that just because people said Duvardo was prone to exaggeration does not mean he killed his parents: “You can’t say if somebody’s a [liar], he’s a murderer,” he said.

Hopkins contends that Duvardo used an ATM card March 30, 1999, the day before the murders, to rent a car in Long Beach, about a mile from the Boeing complex where he worked. About three hours after clocking in at 5:18 a.m., he left his Volkswagen Passat at a Long Beach service station for a tuneup and oil change. Early the next morning, about 3 a.m., Duvardo set out for Nice in the rental car.

Seven hours later, Hopkins said, Duvardo arrived at his parents’ home, killed them and made a hasty return trip.

Hopkins said Duvardo put 1,128 miles on the rental car in two days--enough to cover the trip north and back, with 80 miles to spare.