Judge Orders Trial Despite Lack of Body

GLENDALE —  Wearing shackles around his waist, a former Santa Monica teacher sat quietly last week as a Northern California judge ordered him to stand trial in the murder of a retired Glendale accountant whose body has never been found.

Stanley Alan Hershey, 48, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Shasta County Superior Court on charges of grand theft and murder with two counts of special circumstances--murder for financial gain and murder by lying in wait--that could lead to the death penalty. A trial date will be set then.

Municipal Judge John Loomis ruled after a daylong preliminary hearing April 29 that sufficient evidence was presented to try Hershey for the murder of Gordon T. Johnson, 62, who disappeared Oct. 15, 1989, while traveling from Oregon to Southern California.

Hershey has pleaded not guilty to the charges. A key prosecution witness at the hearing was Hershey’s wife, Jan Fine Hershey, 39. Also a former teacher at the Wilshire West private school in Santa Monica, Jan Hershey testified for more than three hours about events leading up to and following Johnson’s disappearance, including the couple’s belief in channeling, or relying on spirits to guide their lives.

The couple was convicted in 1990 on federal charges of stealing Johnson’s motor home and life savings. They were arrested in Las Vegas after spending what investigators said was Johnson’s money on travel, including a trip to Tahiti, gambling and expensive clothes.

Stanley Hershey was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and his wife, who was described during the federal trial as being a dupe of her husband, was given five years.

Authorities said they knew from evidence that Johnson disappeared somewhere along the rugged and isolated 300-mile route of U.S. 97 between Bend, Ore., and Redding, south of Shasta Lake. Although investigators suspected that he had been killed, no body was found and there was not enough evidence to bring charges. But after the Las Vegas federal trial, Jan Hershey agreed to testify against her husband. Although she denies any knowledge of murder, she pinpointed Johnson’s disappearance to the Shasta Lake area.

The couple’s only child, a daughter, was born just days after the federal trial ended in October, 1990. Jan Hershey’s separation from her daughter, who is with her parents in New York, persuaded her to testify against her husband, authorities said. Prosecutors said there was no agreement to reduce her federal sentence, although they do not plan to charge her with murder.

Jan Hershey “feels hurt and betrayed” by her husband, said her attorney, Russell Swartz of Redding.

“I believe I’m guilty of what would be called ‘willful blindness,’ ” she testified last week. She described how the couple met Johnson at a motor home park in Minnesota, followed him to a campground in Oregon and finally, to Shasta Lake. She said she last saw Johnson on Oct. 15, when she cooked dinner for the three at the lake. Following dinner, she said, Johnson returned to his motor home.

Later that evening, Jan Hershey said she saw her husband leave Johnson’s motor home and “noticed that there was an odor that I described as a wet blanket, a wet dog’s blanket.” Johnson had been traveling with a mixed black Labrador puppy named Rocky, given to him by co-workers as a retirement gift. The dog also disappeared.

Jan Hershey said her husband told her that Johnson had decided to return to Los Angeles and had offered to let the couple use his $219,000 motor home, his four-wheel-drive Suzuki and $120,000 bank account to travel on a religious mission, although she has not specified the nature of the mission.

Federal and state investigators said Stanley Hershey apparently drove Johnson’s motor home that day to a campground in Redding, then returned to the lake where he rented a boat. They theorize that Johnson’s body may have been dumped somewhere in the lake.

At least 23 corpses, mostly those of fishermen, are thought to be in the state’s largest man-made reservoir, which has a 370-mile perimeter.

Lt. Larry Jarrett of the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department said Hershey knows the lake well because his father has lived nearby for years. Repeated searches of the lake have failed to turn up Johnson’s body.

Stacia Pringle contributed to this story from Redding.