Solving Old Murder Brings New Anguish

A string of arrests in old murder cases has catapulted Orange County from worst to first when it comes to solving homicides in Southern California.

But instead of closure, these breakthroughs often bring more anguish for victims’ families.

Lucy Wheelock waited 25 years for police to make an arrest in the murder of her husband, who was gunned down in front of his 4-year-old stepson during a robbery in their Santa Ana apartment.

She often thought an arrest would answer questions and give her someone to blame for Larry Wheelock’s death. But watching the arrest of a suspect on television revived memories she had tried for years to bury.

“It was frightening . . . that I was going to have to relive it all,” she recalled recently. “I remember pacing, thinking, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this right now. I’m going to fall apart.’ ”

Wheelock’s reaction is becoming increasingly familiar to grief counselors across the country whose job is to break the news of an arrest to families.

Five years ago, telephone counselors with the national chapter of Parents of Murdered Children rarely fielded such calls. Now they handle 300 a week, making up about 30% of their calls. The organization provides counselors with special training so they can better help callers to deal with the trauma they relive when “cold cases” are reopened.

“Most people think . . . ‘Aren’t you happy?’ But in reality it causes a great deal of anxiety. They need a lot more support,” said the group’s executive director, Nancy Ruhe-Munch.

“When a murder first happens, you’re in shock, and that’s a buffer to the pain,” she said. “But when the cold case squad reopens a case, you’re not in shock anymore. There’s no protection against the pain.”

Wheelock’s case also underscores a dramatic improvement by investigators in Orange County.

A decade ago, the county had the lowest homicide clearing rate in Southern California, records show; last year, it had the best.

Today, Orange County law enforcement officers are more likely to make an arrest in a murder case than at any time since 1981, according to a Times analysis of crime records.

From 1992 to 1999, the percentage of Orange County homicides forwarded by investigators for prosecution rose from 45% to 86%, records show. By comparison, the statewide average rose from 56% to 60%. In Los Angeles County, the percentage of homicides that are cleared dipped slightly, from 51% to 49%.

Detectives owe much of their success to plunging crime rates, which have given them the opportunity to review forgotten cases. At the same time, Orange County’s main crime lab has received a boost in funding, ending the long waits for ballistic, DNA and other tests that plague crime labs throughout the state.

The Orange County trend in solving murders is most evident in Santa Ana, where a decade ago the city’s detectives ran from killing to killing and made arrests in only a third of them. Today, Santa Ana police are solving slayings faster than new ones occur, with nearly half of murder arrests involving old cases.

But the story of police success is also a tale about the painful journey that families of murder victims must travel.

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Lucy Berroteran and Larry Wheelock knew each other in high school but fell in love years later when they met again at a small grocery store in Banning. It was November 1974. Nine months later, the couple married and moved with Lucy’s son, Jacob Scott, to an apartment in Santa Ana.

The family’s 2 1/2 months in Santa Ana were among the happiest of Lucy’s life. She watched her new husband treat Jacob like his own, and the boy adored his stepfather. But Lucy felt a nagging sense that her contentment would not last long.

On the evening of Oct. 18, 1975, her husband left the family’s Bristol Street apartment with Jacob in tow. The two intended to pick Lucy up from work and drive to her parents’ house for the night. But before they reached the car, two men approached.

One of the strangers removed a handgun and ordered them back inside. The two men robbed Wheelock of his wallet. A shot was fired. Wheelock fell to the floor.

The intruders fled. As Jacob looked around the room, the kitchen wall phone rang. He tried to jump for the receiver, but the phone continued to ring just out of reach.

At the restaurant, Lucy grew anxious. Her husband was rarely late. She called home. There was no answer. After several hours, she caught a ride home with a colleague and found her husband lying at the foot of the stairs. Jacob was asleep on the living room couch.

Santa Ana police searched the apartment for clues. They suspected that a smudged fingerprint they found belonged to the gunman. They searched through thousands of fingerprint cards but couldn’t find a match.

There were no adult witnesses. Desperate for information, detectives questioned Jacob again and again. Eventually, with no fresh leads, they moved on to new killings.

For Lucy Wheelock, the days after the murder crawled by.

Jacob tried to suppress images of the murder--of the intruders’ faces, of his stepfather lying on the apartment’s shag carpet--but the memories would stir unexpectedly.

“We would be in a McDonald’s,” his mother recalled, “and Jake would be shoving me. ‘Mom! Mom! See that guy’s shoes? The guy who shot Larry had shoes like that. Mom! Mom! See that guy’s coat? The guy who shot Larry had a coat like that.’ ”

Eventually, she gave up on the possibility of detectives ever solving the murder.

But police had not given up. After a call from Larry Wheelock’s brother, an investigator with the district attorney’s office and a retired Santa Ana detective reviewed the file.

They found the smudged fingerprint and asked forensic scientists to use new technology to enhance the image. Then they resubmitted the print to the state’s fingerprint database. In November 1999, they got a match.

The fingerprint, police concluded, belonged to a Long Beach man with a criminal record of minor thefts and drug sales. Detectives wanted to make sure they had the right man. They tracked down Jacob Scott in Northern California and showed him a photo lineup. Then 28, Scott picked Larry Donnell Paige as the gunman--the same man whose fingerprint was at the scene, according to police.

Six months later, Lucy Wheelock sat in a girlfriend’s house, watching investigators arrest Paige on television. She was stunned. She knew police were looking at the case again but never imagined they would solve it.

Wheelock was planning to leave California and set up a new life--buy a home, start a new job. Now she suddenly realized there would be a trial to sit through. She would have to relive events she had spent 25 years trying to forget.

Despite the arrest, the case--and the family--still have a long way to go. Paige pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, and his trial is scheduled to start in May. He and his attorney declined to comment for this story.

Investigators acknowledge that the heart of their case is the smudged fingerprint, as well as the eyewitness testimony of a man who was 4 years old when the murder occurred.

The Wheelock case will be one of the first in this new batch of cold cases to go before a jury. Over the last two years, Santa Ana police have made arrests in 22 old cases. But only one has resulted in a jury conviction. Two other cases ended in guilty pleas, and four were cleared when police identified suspects and discovered that they were dead or already serving life prison terms. The remaining 15 are still working their way through the courts.

Many families of victims spend years burdened with the need to know who killed their loved ones and why, said Orange County grief counselor Christine Lopez.

And although an arrest forces them to relive their loss, knowing that the killer is caught often proves crucial eventually in helping to mourn, she said.

“An unsolved crime is like an open wound,” she said.