Man, Woman Charged in Couple’s 1999 Killing

More than a year after a Huntington Beach doctor and his wife, an optometrist, were found slain execution-style along a remote stretch of Ortega Highway, prosecutors on Monday charged two Anaheim residents with the deaths, which they said may have been murder for hire.

Homicide detectives said the suspects, a 30-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman, helped plan the November 1999 killing of Kenneth C. Stahl, 57, and Carolyn Oppy-Stahl, 44, who were shot to death in their car.

The suspects, whom officials did not identify Monday, allegedly were paid for the killings, Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. It is unclear who fired the fatal shots, Amormino said, adding that investigators were working through the night to unravel the mystery. He said more arrests are possible in the next few days.

Both suspects, Amormino said, have been in custody for weeks in connection with unrelated crimes. The woman is being held in Southern California and the man is in another state, he said.

Sheriff’s officials said they will detail today who they think paid the two suspects to carry out the attack, and how investigators cracked a case so lacking in physical evidence that at one point it looked unsolvable.

“It was definitely a murder for hire,” Amormino said. “It took a lot of old-fashioned detective work.” The case took some bizarre twists as investigators unraveled what few clues were left at the scene, Amormino said. Detectives found no witnesses, no sign of struggle, not even any shell casings, only a shattered driver’s side window.

The bodies were discovered by a security guard who saw Oppy-Stahl’s car with its headlights on idling along a deserted stretch of road two miles east of Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park.

Kenneth Stahl was an anesthesiologist who was on call that night through a Huntington Beach hospital.