Suspect in Slaying of O.C. Woman Captured

BUENA PARK —  A tow-truck driver who vowed to commit suicide after confessing to killing his friend’s wife was captured Friday inside a squalid shed in Fontana after spending a week on the run--mooching cigarettes in a desert diner, hitchhiking through Riverside County and then hiding out in a storm drain.

Police said Neill F. Matzen, 36, of Santa Ana was arrested without a struggle about 11 a.m. “He looked like he’d slept in a storm drain for a couple of days,” said Buena Park Police Sgt. Terry Branum. “He took us step by step through what had happened.”

Matzen was held on a warrant charging him with the Nov. 24 murder of Donna J. Connaty, who was beaten to death with a metal pipe in her Buena Park home. Nine days later, he killed the woman’s estranged husband, Richard Connaty, a 38-year-old diesel mechanic, during a trailer park shoot-out in which authorities said he acted in self-defense.

Matzen then sparked a police dragnet through the desert when he fled after writing a letter to a newspaper saying that he had killed the 34-year-old Connaty for a promised $15,000 from her husband. He also wrote police saying he would be dead by the time they got the letter.

But on Friday, they found Matzen alive. His dishwater-blond hair matted and his clothes filthy from spending two nights in a culvert, Matzen did not resist capture when police found him in a shed where he had sought refuge, Branum said.

Police were tipped to Matzen’s whereabouts after the fugitive attempted to make some money by selling scrap metal, he said.

Matzen had “befriended someone in the storm drain” who tutored him on the practice of salvaging metal and selling it, Branum related. Matzen, who moved from the sewer to the shack on Thursday, deposited some copper wiring at a scrap shop in the 15000 block of Arrow Boulevard. The proprietor required him to show identification and recognized Matzen’s picture from newspaper and television reports of his disappearance.

The shop owner called Riverside County authorities and told them that “the guy you’ve been looking for” could be found in the shed a few miles from his business, Branum said.

Buena Park police were notified at 11 p.m. Thursday and caught Matzen at 11 a.m. Friday in the lean-to. He was questioned by Fontana police in connection with a weekend burglary there, then taken for further questioning to Buena Park police headquarters.

During a two-hour interview in which police say he waived his rights, Matzen allegedly told a story of the Connaty deaths that matched the one offered in letters to the Orange County Register, his wife and to Buena Park police. Branum said the letters had “his fingerprints all over them.”

Later Friday, Matzen was taken to Orange County Jail, where he is being held without bail until his arraignment in North Orange County Municipal Court on Monday or Tuesday.

“They captured him? OK! Wonderful!,” said Ramsay Connaty, who spent the afternoon making arrangements for his son’s funeral. “I wish he had done the suicide. It could’ve saved the state a lot of money (for a trial). It’s all been lies from him from the beginning, smears across the Connaty family.”

Filled with allegations of trailer park adultery and murder for hire, the sordid case first unfolded last month in Buena Park with the slaying of Donna Connaty, a nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange who was estranged from her husband, Richard.

She had charged her husband in court papers with abusing her and their three children, and Richard Connaty moved from their home to a Santa Ana mobile home park, where his next-door neighbors were Neill and Cynthia R. Matzen. Donna Connaty visited and at some point gave Cynthia Matzen a dog, which later bit Matzen’s daughter, and the Matzens sued Donna Connaty. So there was bad blood among the four, police said.

In Matzen’s newspaper letter, dated Dec. 7, he admitted fatally beating Donna Connaty in exchange for a promised $15,000 payment from her husband, who wanted custody of the children and sole title to the house. Matzen said he was to be paid with money Connaty planned to get by refinancing the home.

But Richard Connaty, who some friends claim was reconciling with his wife, was killed by Matzen on Dec. 3 after he walked into Matzen’s mobile home, shouted “You killed my wife!” and shot Matzen in the left shoulder.

Matzen grabbed a pistol, ran after Connaty and shot him squarely in the chest, killing him.

Matzen said in the newspaper letter that the shoot-out occurred after he told Richard Connaty that he would no longer permit him to have an affair with his wife, who confirmed that statement with police.

After being cleared in Richard Connaty’s slaying, Matzen was taken to the jail ward of Western Medical Center-Anaheim on suspicion of killing Donna Connaty, but he was released two days later because the Orange County district attorney’s office concluded that it had insufficient evidence to charge him. Part of the problem, police said, was that the most damning evidence against Matzen came from his wife, whose statements by law cannot be used against her husband.

It was Cynthia Matzen who had placed her husband at the murder scene by telling police that she had dropped him off there to fix a gas leak. She also told police that she had picked him up later at a nearby convenience store and he had changed clothes. They then drove to a Victorville-area campground where they rendezvoused with Richard Connaty and his children.

Matzen wrote in his letter to the newspaper that his wife “was present when I told Rick” about that morning “and she heard a lot of the details.” In subsequent interviews with police, she allegedly told them that the metal pipe could be found beneath the Connaty home and that her husband had discarded bloody tennis shoes at the desert campground.

Both were found by police. Fingerprint and blood tests on the pipe and shoes have not been finished, police said Friday.

Cynthia Matzen, who picked up her husband’s car Friday afternoon from an Indio tow shop, could not be reached for comment and has not been charged in the case. Relatives said she has been staying with family members.

After the suicide and confession letters were received, Matzen was the subject of a two-day search in the remote Chiriaco Summit area of Riverside County, where he had said his body could be found. But that search was called off Wednesday, and authorities now speculate that the letters were part of a failed smoke screen to distract police while he fled.

Waitresses at roadside diners and residents of Chiriaco Summit said that Matzen seemed far from suicidal, noting that he had regaled customers with stories full of inconsistencies. They said he offered a variety of explanations for his shoulder wound and spent the weekend drinking coffee and soda and eating meals he had mooched in a truck stop along Interstate 10.

In calling off the search, investigators turned their attention from finding his body where he claimed it would be--in a stone and wood hut in the desert that the Matzens occasionally visited--to broadening their hunt nationwide. On Thursday, police issued an all-points bulletin for Matzen, suspecting that he may have caught a ride with a father-son trucking team out of state.

The arrest warrant was obtained based on Matzen’s own letters, as well as physical evidence gathered at the Connaty home, Branum said.

In his statements Friday to detectives, Matzen said he had hitched a ride from Chiriaco Summit to a Fontana truck stop, then spent two nights in a storm drain. On Thursday, he told police, he moved to the unfinished wood shack in the heart of a residential neighborhood, where nobody seemed to notice him.

A few miles away, he tried unsuccessfully to sell the copper wiring at the scrap metal shop, whose owner declined to be interviewed. But police said Matzen evidently told the merchant where he was staying.

A family of seven that lives about 100 feet from the dirt-floor shed said they were frightened to learn that a murder suspect had spent the previous night within shouting distance of their home.

“We’re going to be more secure and close the doors,” said Elizabeth Garza, 14. “We keep baseball bats by the door because in the past we have seen people creeping around here at night.”

Police said Friday they still don’t know if Matzen intended to take his own life, or had woven an elaborate web of deceit in which he was ultimately caught.

That plot, however, fell apart late Thursday night, police said.

“He bummed cigarettes and Cokes from truck drivers up there for a few days, but what he forgot to do was bring money with him,” Branum said. “That forced him out of hiding.”

MURDER TRIANGLE:

The arrest Friday of Neill Matzen was spawned by a swift series of events that began three weeks ago.

1) Body of Donna Connaty is found bludgeoned to death at the Buena Park home she once shared with her estranged husband, Richard.

2) Richard Connaty bursts in on Matzen at a Santa Ana trailer park. He accuses Matzen of murdering Donna Connaty and wounds him. Matzen chases Connaty and kills him with a gunshot blast to the chest.

3) Matzen is arrested but released by police. He flees to the desert, leaving behind notes alleging he killed Donna Connaty for $15,000 from her husband. Also says he plans to commit suicide. Authorities search for him in the desert but come up empty-handed.

4) Police arrest Matzen at a squalid shack in Fontana after a tip from the owner of a scrap-metal shop where the fugitive sold some copper wire to make money.

Times staff writer Marcida Dodson and correspondent Jon Nalick contributed to this story.