Gunman Seemed Set to ‘Explode’

When Joanne Mazin learned that her friend and business partner -- court-martialed Air Force Capt. Toby Whelchel -- had killed her ex-husband in a Memorial Day shooting spree in Thousand Oaks, her reaction was an overwhelming fear that she might be next.

“She was afraid; she was shaking,” said divorce attorney Hilary Shankin, who talked with her client shortly after police notified Mazin, 53, of the shootings Monday evening. “Nobody knows why Toby went off. And I don’t think she knew what he would do next. She told me she was going into hiding immediately. “

But if Mazin was shocked that Whelchel, 38, would kill three people and injure five more before committing suicide in the Simi Valley Wal-Mart on Tuesday morning, Ed Roth was not.

“A lot of times you hear people say, ‘He was so peaceful, so quiet, we never expected anything like this,’ ” said the 47-year-old entertainment promoter, who met Whelchel through Joanne and Steve Mazin, 52, before they divorced. “That wasn’t this guy.”

Roth said that when he split from his wife in 2002, Whelchel moved into the couple’s Simi Valley home, living for about six months in a platonic relationship with Roth’s ex-wife and their two children. Roth said Whelchel threatened to tape shut the mouth of his youngest child, then 9, and called both children names. Roth said Whelchel threatened him and once tried to slam a car door on his lower body.

“You always got the feeling that there was something inside of him that could explode at any second,” Roth said.

Whelchel, described by some as “a carny” because he made a living running carnival games at parties and was a drifter, was involved in so many acts of violence over the last 15 years, Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks said, that his rap sheet is 1 1/2 pages long.

“We’ve come up with 26 different addresses for him,” Brooks said. “And his history shows a long period of criminal activity, usually against peace officers. And we know he had a psychiatric problem in the military, and that was the reason for him leaving.”

Records show that Whelchel, whose last formal address was in Indiana, had a history of violent charges in three states, including making terrorist threats, assaulting a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest.

And according to military records, Whelchel was court-martialed in 1999, fined $3,000 and discharged from the service for failing to show up to work on time.

From December 1998 to July 1999, Whelchel arrived anywhere from half an hour to more than six hours late for work almost daily, said Candrea Thomas, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo.

Whelchel, then a captain at the base, said he was physically unable to report to work because of medical problems.

Law enforcement officials say that Whelchel’s criminal history is filled with examples of gross overreaction to authority figures, and acts and threats of violence with little provocation. Yet he had received no prison sentences and little jail time, Brooks said.

Two California examples of Whelchel lashing out occurred in Santa Maria and Corona in 2000, according to court records and interviews.

In Santa Maria, Whelchel swung at police officers after being confronted about standing in the bed of a police truck at the Santa Barbara County fairgrounds.

“We went to contact him and it just went downhill from there,” Santa Maria Police Cpl. Steve Lopez said Wednesday. “This guy has a temper, a short fuse.”

In Riverside County, Whelchel took two rounds of pepper spray to the face from police in Corona responding to complaints that he had broken a car windshield with a crowbar at an apartment complex while yelling at two men.

The men said they did not know Whelchel.

Authorities also reported that Whelchel called the officers “wimps” and begged them to uncuff him so he could fight.

“Normally, people comply to one round of pepper spray unless they’re on a mind-altering substance or have a mental disorder,” Corona police spokesman Sgt. Jerry Rodriguez said.

According to a March 2002 probation report, Whelchel told the probation officer that he was “bankrupt because of this [expletive] in Riverside [County].” He said he thought jail deputies were “ignorant idiots,” and confided that he “acted out when he was arrested because he is a diabetic with sleep problems, has chronic insomnia and his blood sugar is low.... He believes he was not guilty because of his medical problems.”

Riverside County Chief Probation Officer Marie Whittington said Whelchel claimed he was “unemployed, is divorced, has two prior marriages [and] describes his health as poor, as he is insulin-dependent.”

James Goff, Whelchel’s attorney during his appeal of the Riverside County conviction said Whelchel “didn’t like lawyers too much; he felt they didn’t do a good job for him.”

Steve Mazin, a veteran Thousand Oaks attorney, represented Whelchel in the Corona and Santa Maria cases and in his Air Force court-martial appeal. Whelchel complained bitterly in court documents about what he saw as Mazin’s poor performance.

“I think Steve Mazin’s acts are criminal in addition to unethical,” Whelchel said in his response to a 2002 request by Mazin for a restraining order against him.

Mazin filed for the restraining order in October 2002 -- the same day he filed for divorce. The attorney told a Ventura County Superior Court judge that “in October of 2000, Mr. Whelchel assaulted me in my house, leaving a permanent scar on my body.”

Mazin said in the declaration that Whelchel and his estranged wife, Joanne, were living in the family home in Thousand Oaks. In granting the restraining order later that year, the judge said he found “clear and convincing evidence that there was a credible threat of violence committed by Mr. Whelchel against Mr. Mazin.”

Court records show that the two men first crossed paths after Whelchel met Joanne Mazin in 2000 at a festival at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. In a legal declaration on file in the Simi Valley courthouse, Whelchel said he had developed a festival game as a business venture and became partners with Joanne Mazin to promote the amusement locally.

Sheriff Brooks said authorities have questioned her about this week’s events.

Brooks said investigators are continuing to investigate the case despite Whelchel’s suicide to determine if anyone else was involved in planning the attack on Mazin, which also wounded Mazin’s friend, Tim Heyne, 51, and killed Heyne’s wife, Jan, 50. The couple were returning Mazin’s boat when Whelchel arrived and started shooting.

During his 16-hour rampage, Whelchel fired on at least five people, including a sheriff’s deputy; beat five others; stole two trucks and broke into a home in a gated community. At the home, he beat Carole Nordella, 48, who later died of her wounds, and then attacked her two youngest children as they tried to hide in a bathroom.

Brooks said investigators are trying to determine what set Whelchel off, and a part of the inquiry will be the assailant’s relationship to Joanne Mazin.

“He knew the [former] wife,” Brooks said. “And the Mazins went through a very contentious divorce, so we’re looking at the possibility that Whelchel was somehow standing up for her. Who knows what the motivation might have been, but that’s the only possible connection [with victims] so far.”

Investigators are also looking into reports that Whelchel once lived in a room at Joanne Mazin’s house, Brooks said.

Attorney Shankin said there was no personal connection between her client and her former husband’s death. Whelchel and Joanne Mazin were partners in Whelchel’s business of putting on carnivals at birthday parties and festivals, Shankin said.

“They were never boyfriend and girlfriend,” the lawyer said. “He never lived on the same property. She’s said under oath that she wasn’t living with him.

“They were business partners only, and even that was ending.”

Times staff writers Lance Pugmire, Stuart Pfeifer, Gregory W. Griggs and Tony Perry contributed to this report.