Lack of Evidence Closes Case

Three months after fugitive murder suspect Karen Lee Huster was found in a San Fernando Valley apartment with the dismembered corpse of her 73-year-old lover, Los Angeles police detectives say they have abandoned their homicide investigation of her because the coroner’s office was unable to determine the man’s cause of death.

Huster, who had been in Los Angeles’ Twin Towers jail since her arrest Nov. 10, was extradited earlier this month to Washington County, Ore., where she remains in custody. The 41-year-old is currently facing murder charges in the death of her daughter, Elisabeth, who disappeared four years ago at the age of 10.

The child’s body has never been found, however, and now prosecutors are facing the difficult task of getting a murder conviction without a body.

“I don’t know how they intend to prove it without any physical evidence,” said Huster’s attorney, Tim Dunn.

Huster’s bizarre case has garnered intense media coverage in Oregon and nationwide. After the dissolution of her marriage, she served jail time from 1997 to 1999 for custodial interference after refusing to tell a judge the whereabouts of her daughter. After she was indicted in April on charges in the child’s death by an Oregon grand jury, authorities lost track of her until she was found by Los Angeles police in James Cameron’s Canoga Park home.

Cameron’s remains were discovered in two refrigerators in the apartment. Huster later told investigators she had dismembered Cameron after he died of a heart attack.

According to LAPD Det. Mike Oppelt, coroner’s examiners were unable to determine whether Cameron had died before or because of the mutilation. Without such a finding, Oppelt said, there’s not much of a case.

“They’re not ruling out homicide, but they have nothing to back that up,” Oppelt said. “Given that, our case has pretty much ended.”

Although mutilation of a corpse is a felony in California, prosecutors here did not file such charges because they didn’t want to delay the Oregon murder trial, said Sandi Gibbons of the district attorney’s office.

But the grisly circumstances and Huster’s involvement may come into play in her Oregon trial. Washington County prosecutors have requested material from the LAPD investigation into Cameron’s death, and Oppelt surmised that they may use it to show how Huster allegedly did away with her daughter’s body.

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Washington County Assistant Dist. Atty. Rick Knapp, who is handling the case, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Dunn, who expects Huster to plead not guilty, said he will fight to have thrown out any evidence from the Cameron case--which he calls “unfairly prejudicial and irrelevant.”

A status hearing is set for March 2, and a trial date is tentatively set for October, Dunn said. Huster also faces a charge of violating probation for an earlier burglary conviction.

The relationship between Huster and Cameron was initially unclear, but Oppelt said Tuesday that the two were romantically involved.

Cameron’s stepson, Craig Faulkner, 44, was unavailable for comment Tuesday. In an earlier interview with The Times, Faulkner said his stepfather, a widower, was a retired engineer whose health had declined after a stroke about a year ago.

The coroner’s investigation did reveal that Cameron suffered from heart disease, coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier said.

“The only part of the puzzle missing was [whether] all of this occurred antemortem or post-mortem,” Oppelt said. “The coroner’s office has now said we may never know.”