Body Is Found in Truck; 4 Arrested

Huntington Beach police detectives who followed two men and two women into Riverside late Tuesday before pulling over their vehicles said they found a body hidden under a pile of wood in the bed of the pickup truck.

The dead man was wrapped and buried under logs, police said.

Detectives said they believed the four suspects -- two in the truck, two in a sedan -- were headed to the desert to dump the body.

“This is really weird,” said Huntington Beach Police Capt. Dan Johnson. “Usually you have a crime scene, a victim and no suspects. This, you have a body, suspects and no crime scene.”

Police said the grisly find followed a five-hour undercover operation.

Two of the suspects were wanted on warrants; a third was a parolee, police said.

The men are members of a white supremacy group, detectives said.

Officers tailed the pickup truck and sedan into Riverside before pulling over the vehicles at Spruce Street and Atlanta Avenue.

“We wanted to see who they were hanging out with, having contacts with,” Johnson said. “Then we got information that if we didn’t catch them, they’d be gone.”

Police said they found the body after summoning tow trucks to haul away the vehicles. The pickup truck, with the body still in the rear bed, was towed to the Orange County coroner’s office in Santa Ana.

The man may have been dead for up to 2 1/2 days, officers said. Police did not release his name nor disclose how he was killed.

Arrested were Billy Johnson, 40, and Suzanne Miller, 24, both of Huntington Beach; Jason Karr, 39, of Costa Mesa and Erin Brooks, 19, whose residence was unknown.

All four were booked into Orange County Jail on suspicion of murder and are being held on $1 million bail.

Johnson and Karr were sought on warrants for alleged drug sales, officers said.