Laguna Police Check Links to Man Held in Ex-Agent’s Death

Laguna Beach police began checking Tuesday on whether a drifter accused of torturing and killing a retired immigration agent in his Santa Ana-area apartment also robbed gay men in the Laguna Beach area.

The attempt to link Gregory Michael Pisarcik to crimes in Laguna Beach and other south Orange County beach cities came after his arrest in the death of Narciso P. Leggs Jr., a former immigration agent whose bound and partially dismembered body was found Saturday.

Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which has primary jurisdiction in the investigation, would not elaborate on why detectives suspect Pisarcik was targeting gay men.

Sgt. Jason C. Kravetz said the Laguna Beach Police Department was trying to determine whether any of its cases might be connected to Pisarcik, and also was asking anyone who might have had contact with him to come forward.

“It’s definitely something we should look into,” Kravetz said. “Right now we don’t know of any robberies we can attribute to this guy.... There’s a chance a victim may come forward who previously didn’t report anything.”

Pisarcik, 25, was being held without bail Tuesday and was scheduled to be arraigned today on murder and robbery charges in the death of Leggs, who worked as a supervisory detention and deportation officer before retiring from the INS in 1997.

The two men apparently met in recent weeks in downtown Laguna Beach. Leggs, 53, owned a limousine firm that once provided service there.

Pisarcik, a transient who grew up in New Jersey and has stayed on and off with friends and relatives in Ojai and Orange, has no record in Laguna Beach but a history of theft and narcotics arrests and convictions elsewhere, according to records.

Leggs is believed to have been killed inside his garage apartment on Irvine Boulevard in an unincorporated area near Santa Ana. His body was found by sheriff’s deputies Saturday after Leggs’ landlord called police because he hadn’t seen his tenant for two days.

Leggs was bound, gagged and tortured, police said.

He died from a blow to the head, officers said.

His apartment was ransacked and some of his property stolen, including a 1994 Lincoln Town Car.

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Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.