The discovery file was replete with forensic reports and color copies of the crime scene photographs. The death room was completely white – walls, carpet, furniture and bedding. Two naked bodies were sprawled on the bed and floor. Mitzi Elliot and Johan Rilz. The scene was red on white. Two large bullet holes in the man’s chest. Two in the woman’s chest and one in her forehead. He by the bedroom door. She on the bed. Red on white. It was not a clean scene. The wounds were large. Though the murder weapon was missing, an accompanying report said that slugs had been identified through ballistic markings as coming from a Smith amp; Wesson model 29, a.44 magnum revolver. Fired at close quarters, it was overkill.
Walter Elliot had been suspicious about his wife. She had announced her intentions to divorce him and he believed there was another man involved. He told the sheriff’s homicide investigators that he had gone to the Malibu beach house because his wife had told him she was going to meet with the interior designer. Elliot thought that was a lie and timed his approach so that he would be able to confront her with a paramour. He loved her and wanted her back. He was willing to fight for her. He had gone to confront, he repeated, not to kill. He didn’t own a.44 magnum, he told them. He didn’t own any guns.
According to the statement he gave investigators, when Elliot got to Malibu he found his wife and her lover naked and already dead. It turned out that the lover was in fact the interior designer, Johan Rilz, a German national Elliot had always thought was gay.
Elliot left the house and got back in his car. He started to drive away but then thought better of it. He decided to do the right thing. He turned around and pulled back into the driveway. He called 911 and waited out front for the deputies to arrive.
The chronology and details of how the investigation proceeded from that point would be important in mounting a defense. According to the reports in the file, Elliot gave investigators an initial account of his discovery of the two bodies. He was then transported by two detectives to the Malibu substation so he would be out of the way while the investigation of the crime scene proceeded. He was not under arrest at this time. He was placed in an unlocked interview room where he waited three long hours for the two lead detectives to finally clear the crime scene and come to the substation. A videotaped interview was then conducted but, according to the transcript I reviewed, quickly crossed the line into interrogation. At this point Elliot was finally advised of his rights and asked if he wanted to continue to answer questions. Elliot wisely chose to stop talking and to ask for an attorney. It was a decision made better late than never but Elliot would have been better off if he had never said word one to the investigators. He should’ve just taken the nickel and kept his mouth shut.
While investigators had been working the crime scene and Elliot was cooling his heels in the substation interview room, a homicide investigator working in the sheriff’s headquarters in Whittier drew up several search warrants that were faxed to a superior court judge and signed. These allowed investigators to search throughout the beach house and Elliot’s car and permitted them to conduct a gunshot residue test on Elliot’s hands and clothes to determine if there were gas nitrates and microscopic particles of burned gunpowder on them. After Elliot refused further cooperation, his hands were bagged in plastic at the substation and he was transported to Sheriff’s Headquarters, where a criminalist conducted the GSR test in the crime lab. This consisted of wiping chemically treated disks on Elliot’s hands and clothing. When the disks were processed by a lab technician, those that had been wiped on his hands and sleeves tested positive for high levels of gunshot residue.
At that point Elliot was formally arrested on suspicion of murder. With his one phone call he contacted his personal lawyer, who in turn called in Jerry Vincent, whom he had attended law school with. Elliot was eventually transported to the county jail and booked on two counts of murder. The sheriff’s investigators then called the department’s media office and suggested that a press conference should be set up. They had just bagged a big one.
