Cosby Suspect Has Criminal Record in O.C.

Hours before Mikail Markhasev was arrested as the suspect in the murder of Ennis Cosby, he had pleaded guilty in an Orange County courtroom to marijuana possession, according to court records and a close friend.

Markhasev, 18, and three friends had been stopped by police shortly before midnight on Feb. 8 as they drove on the quiet residential street in Los Alamitos where Markhasev had lived, because of a misplaced or missing license plate, according to court records. Police found a small amount of marijuana in Markhasev’s possession, the records show.

Investigators say there is no way police in Los Alamitos could have known he was a suspect in the Cosby killing.

Last Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to drug possession in Orange County Municipal Court in Westminster and paid a $50 fine. Afterward, he visited with a few friends in Los Alamitos, where he had lived for six years, and told them everything had gone well, according to his close friend, who asked not to be identified.

The friend said Markhasev got on a bus between noon and 1 p.m. to return home to North Hollywood. Later that afternoon, he was arrested on suspicion of murder by undercover police outside the house he shares with his mother.

Ennis Cosby, actor Bill Cosby’s son, had been shot to death Jan. 16 while he was changing a flat tire on his Mercedes-Benz on a side road above Bel Air.

Markhasev’s friend said the Ukrainian-born immigrant called his house Thursday and asked his mother to tell Markhasev’s mother about the arrest. The friend’s mother waited until her son came home from work, and together they watched the evening news. They did not call Markhasev’s mother, he said.

“How you going to call somebody’s mother and tell them their son is arrested for murder? She knows. No way he did it,” the friend said. “Why would he try to take someone’s car when he doesn’t even drive? He didn’t even like guns.”

Markhasev has never had a California driver’s license, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Several friends said Monday that Markhasev still considered Los Alamitos his home and that he spent as much time there as he did in the San Fernando Valley, where his mother moved in 1995. He dated at least three former Los Alamitos High School classmates, they said.

“He used to stay at my house all the time,” said Nicholas Batshon, 18, who said he and Markhasev were good friends in the ninth and 10th grades at Los Alamitos High School.

“We were [graffiti] taggers, but we never got in any trouble,” said Batshon, who now lives in Long Beach. “I couldn’t sleep for two days after I saw his face on the news. He didn’t do it.”

The friend who did not want to be identified said that Markhasev “took care of my little brother when I couldn’t be there for him. He used to play baseball with him, basketball, anything he wanted.”

Markhasev never knew his own father, who had left him and his mother in the Ukraine, the friend said.

He and Markhasev enjoyed going to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland on Saturday afternoons after both were done with work, he said.

Batshon and others said Markhasev had grown tougher after he became affiliated with a Los Alamitos gang during his sophomore year. Some remembered two particularly serious fights in which he was involved in the last two years, one after midnight at a Shell station and one on the grounds of a continuing education high school, both in Los Alamitos.

“He was a big guy; he was tough,” Aaron Riley, 15, said. “But I kicked back with him at a friend’s house three days before he was arrested. He was joking and laughing, like he didn’t have no worry in the world.”

Speculation ran high among his friends about who called the National Enquirer to turn him in for a $100,000 reward.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Anthony Alba said authorities in Orange County would have had no information that would have alerted them that Markhasev was a murder suspect.

Although LAPD detectives received a tip about Markhasev’s involvement in January, police said they had a number of leads to investigate, including figuring out who the tipster was, before they put Markhasev under surveillance in March, Alba said.

“We weren’t dealing with physical evidence linking him to the crime,” Alba said.

* Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Matt Lait.