Police Find Elderly Couple Beaten to Death in Their Home

Acting on a query from concerned neighbors, police found a retired aerospace engineer and his wife apparently beaten to death in their Mission Viejo home Thursday morning.

The bodies of Ray and Pauline Mingus, ages 69 and 74, were found by Orange County sheriff’s deputies about 11:30 a.m. Thursday after members of the nearby Mount of Olives Lutheran Church reported that they had not seen the couple for several days, Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

The slayings were the first homicides in the largely middle-class suburb since 1997. There have been only eight killings in Mission Viejo since 1990, according to police crime statistics.

Sheriff’s deputies found the couple’s battered bodies inside their single-story, white stucco house on Matias Drive, a quiet hillside street near La Paz Road and Muirlands Boulevard. Amormino said they may have been dead for as long as two days.

Police said they are seeking the couple’s son, Richard Eugene Mingus, 34, for questioning.

Ray Mingus was a retired aerospace engineer, and his wife looked after several children in the couple’s home, neighbors said. James Downey, who lives a few doors away, said some of the children were from a family that belonged to Mount of Olives Church, where the couple attended services every Sunday. Apparently police were called after the children’s mother became concerned, he said.

Downey said he thinks the couple had at least one other adult child, a daughter living in Japan.

Police were seeking the couple’s 2000 white Honda hatchback, license plate 4LLN770.

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Times staff writers Jack Leonard and Matt Ebnet and librarian Lois Hooker contributed to this story.