‘Missing Body’ Murder Trials Are on the Rise

When Long Beach real estate agent Bruce Koklich’s wife failed to show up for work on a Monday morning in August, he reported her missing and offered a $100,000 reward for information on her whereabouts.

Detectives launched an extensive search but didn’t find Jana Carpenter-Koklich. They did, however, discover drops of her blood in her abandoned car and in the bedroom she shared with her husband.

“In this case, it didn’t take very long to make us start believing that foul play was involved,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Ray Peavy.

Koklich was arrested in January on suspicion of his wife’s murder, even though her body never turned up. He is now out on bail awaiting a preliminary hearing in the case.

Once considered rare and risky, murder trials in cases in which the bodies are missing are becoming increasingly common.

Since the first “no body” conviction in the nation based solely on circumstantial evidence in 1957, prosecutors have successfully tried defendants in a number of such cases where victims were believed to be dropped from airplanes, pushed into the ocean or buried next to freeways.

Prosecutors have been aided by advances in crime lab and DNA technology that can link a suspect to a crime scene without a body. They have also benefited from a change in attitude among some jurors, who no longer consider a body critical evidence in a murder case.

At least twice recently in Los Angeles County, defendants were convicted despite missing bodies.

In October 2000, a man was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering his half sister, the wife of Los Lobos guitarist Cesar Rosas.

Later that same month, the victim’s bones were found buried in the Santa Clarita Valley after the killer told detectives where to look.

Last year, a Pomona woman and her live-in boyfriend were convicted of murder and child abuse in the death of the woman’s 3-year-old daughter. The child’s body was never found.

Prosecutors acknowledge that it is still a challenge to try a murder case without being able to show jurors photographs of the victim’s body or without presenting a medical examiner’s testimony about the autopsy.

First they must persuade a jury that a murder has occurred before they can go about proving who committed it.

“The success rate is mixed,” said Robert Pugsley, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law.

“One of the hardest things in the world is to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the person killed somebody where the [victim] was never found.”

Whether jurors are likely to accept that a murder victim could simply vanish also depends on the defendant, Pugsley said.

Jurors might believe that a member of an organized crime ring or a person with a lot of money could get rid of a body, he said, but they might be less likely to think an average husband or wife could do the same.

To convince jurors that a murder has taken place, prosecutors say the key is showing that the missing person’s life came to a complete and sudden halt.

Carpenter-Koklich, for example, was described by family and friends as punctual, but authorities said she missed several appointments and failed to return phone calls beginning the weekend before her disappearance. She also apparently didn’t contact her father, former state Sen. Paul Carpenter, even though he was in very poor health. She has not been heard from since.

Los Angeles prosecutor Stephen Kay has stressed the everyday routines of victims in the no-body cases he has tried.

In one, Charles Manson associate Bruce Davis was convicted in 1972 of the murder of ranch hand Shorty Shea after Kay showed that Shea’s life routines had suddenly halted. Though a transient, Shea always called his mother at Christmas, sent her candy on Mother’s Day and regularly bugged a producer friend for a job, Kay said.

In such cases, prosecutors also rely more heavily on eyewitnesses, incriminating statements and documents.

In the 1957 case, L. Ewing Scott was convicted of murdering his wealthy wife, Evelyn, who disappeared from their Bel-Air home two years earlier.

Prosecutors showed that Scott had been forging his wife’s name on checks for living expenses. The only remnants of the 63-year-old woman were her eyeglasses and dentures buried under leaves on property near her mansion.

Scott was sentenced to life, but was freed in 1978. He died seven years later.

Billionaire Boys Club leader Joe Hunt was convicted in 1987 of killing Beverly Hills con man Ron Levin, whose body was never found. Prosecutors said Hunt killed Levin to avenge a high-stakes investment hoax and raise funds for his business fraternity. Hunt was sentenced to life without parole.

Last year, a Newport Beach man accused of killing his wife and dumping her body into the ocean was convicted of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors argued that Eric Christopher Bechler killed his wife to collect on her $2-million insurance policy. The key witness was Bechler’s girlfriend, who testified that he admitted murdering his wife and making up a story about her falling into the sea. Bechler was sentenced to life in prison.

Detectives who investigate cases of vanished persons consult with the FBI, issue national bulletins and run checks on credit cards and driver’s licenses before concluding that the person is not alive.

“In today’s computerized world, records are kept of everything,” Peavy said. “If there is absolutely no activity anywhere, it’s like checking that person’s pulse and [discovering] they’re dead.”

Often, the investigations produce physical evidence--a shoe print, a hair, a tire track--that may make prosecutors’ job a little easier. But there is always the lingering doubt, the possibility that the alleged victim could walk through the door, Peavy said.

That can make for fascinating courtroom debate. In a 1985 case, a defense attorney argued that there was no proof that her client, Musa Has, 20, had killed Hollywood resident Marshall Sowder, 67, because his body was never found.

Prosecutor Ray Mireles, in his closing argument, countered: “The defense concludes maybe Marshall Sowder will come walking through the door.... Well, with the evidence, I suspect that if Marshall Sowder comes walking through the door, he’ll be walking hand in hand with Jimmy Hoffa.”

Has, who said Sowder never returned from a Hawaiian vacation, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

In some cases, jurors decide that the defendant has not committed the murder or that prosecutors have failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Former Reseda auto shop owner Harvey Rader, for example, was acquitted in 1992 of killing a former Israeli soldier and his family in a case with a lack of bodies, weapons or eyewitnesses.

Even when they do convict, jurors are hesitant to recommend the death penalty in no-body cases.

“There is a natural reluctance in imposing the ultimate punishment on someone whose conviction rests on killing somebody who cannot be found,” Pugsley said.