Parolee Accused of 1992 Slaying

A parolee was charged Tuesday with abducting and murdering an aspiring model in 1992 after a break in the case that Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca credited to “bulldog police work.”

David Al Rademaker, 40, of Burbank pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in Los Angeles Superior Court. Rademaker had been released from prison recently on parole from a conviction for abusing a child.

He is being held without bail in the slaying of Kimberly Pandelios, 20, a Northridge mother of one who was last seen Feb. 27, 1992, after telling friends she was going to a modeling shoot. Her remains were found a year later in the Angeles National Forest.

Rademaker could face the death penalty if convicted.

Baca said his deputies were recently reviewing old unsolved slayings when they found a previously unidentified informant who was to provide critical information in the Pandelios case. Baca declined to be more specific.

“They were going over the facts of the case and re-examining evidence when it led them to a person that had not been talked to before or mentioned in any of the documentation,” said Capt. Ray Peavy. “They contacted that person and as a result got new information.”

A decision by prosecutors on whether to seek capital punishment or life in prison without parole is weeks away, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The burning car belonging to Pandelios was discovered in February 1992, off Angeles Crest Highway about 50 yards from the Monte Cristo campground. Pandelios’ husband told investigators that his wife had made several calls to someone named “Paul” to do a possible photo shoot.

Two months after her car was found, a hiker discovered an appointment book and other items belonging to the Cuban native. Hikers stumbled across a skull on March 3, 1993, about 100 yards from where authorities had called off a search a year earlier.

At the time of the crime, Rademaker allegedly was using false identities to solicit teenage models through personal advertisements in weekly newspapers, Peavy said. He also ran a telephone sex line.

Rademaker was sentenced to state prison in June 1998, after pleading no contest to providing a child under 16 for the purpose of committing a lewd act. He also pleaded no contest to a second charge of inducing a minor to commit a controlled-substance violation, according to Robison and state prison officials.

Baca credited detectives Tom Kerfoot and Steve Davis with cracking the case, which they began reviewing earlier this year. Re-interviews of witnesses and the new informant produced “significant incriminating evidence that told us he was in fact the killer,” Peavy said.

Rademaker was kept under surveillance from the moment he left prison, Peavy said.

Peavy said Rademaker was booked for a parole violation when he was arrested in March, six weeks after his release from prison.