Fugitive Found Guilty in ’84 Slayings

A former employee was convicted Tuesday of killing an Antelope Valley rancher and the rancher’s companion 18 years ago.

Josif Jurcoane fled to Mexico the day after Lloyd William Bryden, 67, and Alice B. McCannel, 39, were shot to death July 4, 1984, at Bryden’s Mountain Brook Ranch near Palmdale. He was charged in their deaths a few days later.

Jurcoane evaded authorities until last year, when he was arrested in Mexico on drug charges. He was extradited to the United States to face murder charges.

A San Fernando jury found Jurcoane guilty on two counts of second-degree murder and of using a firearm and causing great bodily harm to a person older than 60. The panel took two days to reach its verdict.

Jurcoane, 52, faces 30 years to life in prison, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rouman Ebrahim said. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shari K. Silver set sentencing for Sept. 20.

During the weeklong trial, Jurcoane testified that he had lied to Mexican immigration officials when he blamed a killer he called “El Loco” for the deaths.

A day earlier, an immigration official told jurors that Jurcoane had said he feared he would be wrongly prosecuted because “El Loco” had used Jurcoane’s shotgun to kill the two victims.

Authorities matched shotgun shells from the crime scene to a weapon found in a pickup truck parked in front of Jurcoane’s trailer, Ebrahim said.

The defendant’s daughter, Josephine Jurcoane, 22, testified that she recalled having seen her father leave the house moments before Bryden and McCannel were killed, then hearing gunshots.

A few minutes later, she said, she saw Jurcoane return to the family’s trailer, adjacent to the Bryden ranch, and hastily pack his clothes before vanishing.

Prosecutors said that Jurcoane had little, if any, contact with his family during the 17 years he lived in Mexico, many of them with another woman. They tried to force Susan Jurcoane to testify at her estranged husband’s preliminary hearing last year, but failed.

A state appellate court ruled that she retained the right to invoke her marital privilege even though the couple had lived apart for nearly two decades. Jurcoane had worked as a mechanic on the 450-acre Bryden ranch and had helped manage the property. About Memorial Day 1984 Bryden fired Jurcoane and ordered him to move off the property, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said McCannel and Susan Jurcoane argued over the ownership of some farm animals before Jurcoane killed her and Bryden. Jurcoane, they said, raced over to the ranch after his wife told him of her dispute.