Suicide Leap Kills 2 Men Wanted in Murder Case : Crime: The suspect in a Texas student’s shooting death jumps with his friend from the 12th floor of a West Hollywood hotel as police try to enter the room.

In a bizarre suicide pact, a man wanted in a brutal Texas murder and his best friend jumped to their deaths from the 12th floor of a chic Sunset Strip hotel before dawn Friday as police tried to break into their suite, authorities said.

The two men, objects of a nationwide hunt, died where they fell on the sidewalk moments after Los Angeles police officers began banging on the door of their hotel room.

“We saw the open window in the bedroom and looked down and saw the bodies on the pavement below,” said Sgt. Pat Findley, who led a team of officers into the 12th-floor room of the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.

Police tentatively identified the dead men as Matthew M. Novanty, 22, and his roommate, Jason E. Smith, 19. Novanty was wanted for the widely publicized murder two weeks ago in Austin, Tex., of a popular University of Texas freshman, Tiffani Ann Bruce, 18. Smith was wanted for questioning.

Bruce’s partially clothed body was discovered Oct. 21 in her rented home a short distance from the University of Texas campus. Dead at least two days when found, she had been bound and shot twice in the head and once in the chest at close range, Austin police said. Investigators believe Novanty had wanted a romantic relationship with Bruce, whom he met through his job as a door-to-door solicitor for an environmental company.

“They (Novanty and Smith) had a fixation on death,” Austin Police Sgt. Brent McDonald, in charge of the Bruce case, said in a telephone interview. “They were into . . . death and suicide. They talked about suicide and read material pertaining to that.”

Novanty and Smith, described by Austin authorities as “close friends,” dropped out of sight right after Bruce’s murder and apparently fled to the Los Angeles area in an effort to elude a widening dragnet, which grew to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

On Monday, they checked into their $275-a-night suite at the exclusive Mondrian, a favorite haunt of celebrities and rock stars, ordered room service and did nothing that would attract extraordinary attention from hotel employees.

Then, in the early hours of Friday, the two fugitives made a telephone call from their room to a friend in Austin and spoke of a suicide pact, Lt. Juan Gonzalez of the Austin Police Department said. Gonzalez said the friend reported the content of the call to police.

Gonzalez said Austin authorities traced the call to West Hollywood and notified the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division, which immediately dispatched officers to the hotel.

There, police climbed to the 12th-floor suite, tried the door’s combination lock but found it was secured with a deadbolt. A hotel employee with a key was summoned. As police struggled with the door, the officers heard a “rustling” sound, Los Angeles police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said.

“It could have been the window being opened. It could have been the breeze,” Booth said. “When they gained entry, they found no one.”

The bodies were found, side-by-side, on Olive Drive off of Sunset Boulevard.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction in West Hollywood, where the Mondrian is located, took over the investigation Friday morning and since then has refused to discuss the case. Deputies said they would await fingerprints before confirming the identity of the dead men.

Novanty, a senior majoring in communications at the University of Texas, and Smith, a sophomore engineering student, lived together off-campus and had both dropped out of school this semester, university records show.

The two went to work part time for Clean Water Action, a firm that works on environmental issues, as door-to-door neighborhood canvassers. Austin police and the Travis County district attorney’s office said Novanty met Bruce, the murder victim, while on his job, became attracted to her, then apparently returned later.

In an arrest warrant issued by a Texas court on Oct. 24, Novanty was quoted as having told friends he wanted to “date” Bruce.

“He went back to her, possibly in an attempt to follow through with his attraction,” Travis County Assistant Dist. Atty. Terry Keel said. “We have some evidence there was a struggle that took place.”

Keel said police would investigate whether Novanty could be tied to a string of unsolved rapes in the same Hyde Park neighborhood where Bruce lived, but he cautioned that Novanty could not yet be considered a suspect in those cases. Neither Keel nor Austin police would say whether Bruce, a fashion and design major and honors student, had been sexually assaulted.

Austin police said they were able to tie Novanty to the murder when a palm print in Bruce’s dried blood matched prints taken of Novanty in a 1989 drug arrest.

Bruce’s murder had convulsed the University of Texas campus and shocked people who knew and worked with all parties involved.

“We were totally shocked, shocked and angered and betrayed when we even heard that he (Novanty) might be involved,” said Mary Anne Neely, Novanty’s boss at Clean Water Action. She described him as quiet, shy and “a good worker” who gave no signs of trouble.