Main suspect in George Arthur murder case found dead

When a well-known gangster was killed in a freeway accident after the end of his shift at the Los Angeles Central Jail, possible whodunct theories got completely out of hand.

Authorities found beer bottles and a mattress in George Arthur’s “souped-up party van,” and it appeared to be an unfortunate case of driving under the influence. But the 14-year police veteran had a long list of vicious enemies. Arthur had received death threats from gang members, was in charge of a “tough” section of the prison, and crashed just steps from a “gang-infested” government housing project downtown. Almost everyone around him could have been suspected if it had turned out to be murder. Episode 3, Season 5 of Accident, suicide or murder traces the tireless detective work that was necessary to get to the bottom of his mysterious death.

In the 1980s, large parts of Los Angeles were in the grip of turf wars between the country’s most notorious gangs. “The crack epidemic, PCP and the increasing number of gangs and gang members triggered a wave of crime,” explained Sergeant Richard Valdemar of the LA County Sheriff’s Dept.

According to LAPD Detective Paul Coulter, the city averaged 1,100 to 1,200 murders per year. “Today there are only 300 to 400. That’s still a lot, but not as much as it was back then.”

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Cause of death of George Arthur

On the evening of June 1, 1985, Deputy George Arthur rolled out of the prison parking lot at 9:30 p.m. after his shift ended. By 10 p.m., he was fighting for his life after his van crashed into an embankment that separated two highways. Arthur smashed the windshield with his head, and there was blood everywhere – on the windshield and on the driver and passenger sides. With beer cans flying around his van, “the Highway Patrol officers immediately concluded it was a drunken driving incident,” said Los Angeles reporter Tricia Takasugi.

Arthur died within an hour at a local hospital and a full autopsy including a toxicology report was ordered.

But the autopsy results surprised police: four bullets were lodged in the back of his head. “They believe this was not discovered earlier because of the trauma after the first accident,” Takasugi noted. “We were all shocked… this changed the whole direction of the investigation,” Valdemar said.

Simply by the nature of his work, “George has made many enemies,” he added.

Who was George Arthur?

Described as a “hero” in Accident, suicide or murder, Arthur once narrowly survived a violent shootout with gang members. He and his partner made a police training video about the experience called The will to survive.

“So every new deputy that came into our system knew who George Arthur was,” said Detective Shaun McCarthy. “He was kind of a larger-than-life figure within the ranks of the sheriff’s department.”

Arthur was married but amicably separated from his wife, Linda Arthur, who was living in Northern California at the time of his death. She also worked for the sheriff’s office and the ex-partners were seeing other people, raising the possibility of a jealous lover.

Police discover another person in the van

Since it was now a murder case, the Los Angeles Police Department took over the case. “They sent out a whole class from the (police) academy to do a grid search,” McCarthy said, and found a trail of blood leading along the side of a highway into an area known to be frequented by gang members.

Bullet casings were discovered in the van and blood from the passenger seat windshield was sent to a laboratory. DNA testing was not yet possible in 1985, but police were able to determine the blood type and soon realized there was a second person in the vehicle.

After police canvassed the neighborhood, two witnesses came forward with information. “They saw two people near the scene of the accident. One person was seen running from the van toward a nearby housing project. The other person was seen kicking in the windshield of the van and then running down the embankment at the side of the highway.” said Takasugi.

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A wanted poster led to a man who lived nearby and later admitted to stealing items from the car, but he was not considered a murder suspect.

At this point, Valdemar ran through several scenarios: “Was his car stolen? Was a bad guy hiding in the van when he drove away? Was he having problems with his wife?” Of course, someone from prison could have sneaked into his van.

To add to the confusion, a love triangle was not out of the question. A deputy had confronted Arthur a few days before the murder with the suspicion that he was having an affair with his wife, but the lead ultimately led nowhere.

The list of suspects is growing

“In our work, we took down some of the biggest drug dealers in Los Angeles or their gangs… (Arthur) knew them by name and they knew us,” explained Valdemar, who had worked with Arthur in a gang unit targeting the Mexican Mafia and a gang called the Black Guerilla Family.

Two gang members had threatened Arthur with death in the past, and Valdemar used his connections to track them down. “I had a core of informants, so I kept driving to the prison to visit them,” Valdemar said, but that ultimately came to nothing.

After months of impasse, the police contacted the national television program America’s Most Wanted They offered a $10,000 reward, but even then the case remained unsolved.”It was clear to me that this case would never be forgotten. George was my friend, he was a hero in the department,” said Valdemar. “I never gave up on it.”

Fourteen years later, the case is reopened

By 1999, DNA technology had already made great strides. The LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department reopened the case together, examining the old blood samples from the blood trail and from the van. After exhausting all leads to the gang, Detectives McCarthy and Coulter took a new look at George and Linda’s romantic escapades and began questioning all of their known partners.

While McCarthy was collecting DNA samples from men close to Linda, he received a call from a colleague asking for a meeting. At lunch, the colleague handed him a post-it note with a name on it: Ted Kirby, a former colleague of George Arthur.

“I didn’t see that name in any report. In any document. In any notebook. And we were only able to get DNA from one person: Ted Kirby,” McCarthy said.

Kirby was a retired deputy sheriff and now lived with his wife in Spokane, Washington.

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Investigators are struggling to obtain a DNA sample from Ted Kirby

Investigators flew to Spokane to obtain a DNA sample from Kirby, but the suspect was uncooperative and hired an attorney. In addition, a local judge refused to issue a warrant, saying there was insufficient evidence to prove a crime.

But investigators came up with a clever solution: They used Kirby’s old time cards, based on the assumption that the person who was in the van with Arthur that night must have taken vacation after the murder. There was blood from the suspect on the windshield, and that person was presumably injured.

It turned out that Kirby was on sick leave for 12 days after the murder – the only time in his career that he had been on sick leave for an extended period of time.

They also questioned Linda again. “That’s when she opened up and started talking about how possessive he was. He would show up at social events she was invited to even though he wasn’t there. He would drive by her house at night,” McCarthy said. Linda claimed she told authorities to look at Kirby in 1985, but no one saw his name in the original records.

With this new information, the judge signed the court order for a DNA swab and fingerprints. Initially, a match was found for the blood trail along the highway, but investigators ran into another obstacle. “The LAPD chief said, ‘No, you’re not going to arrest him. They got him out of the van, but they haven’t gotten him in yet,'” McCarthy recalls.

Meanwhile, they searched Kirby’s home in Spokane and found that he was missing. Oddly, he had left behind his wedding ring and wallet. However, without a warrant, local police did not search for him.

A few days later, DNA results proved that Kirby was in the van, but it was too late. His body was found by local reporter Gary Darigol, who had been closely following the case and learned of his mysterious disappearance. On July 14, 1999, Darigol and a news photographer were searching the empty fields near his residence and made the gruesome discovery. Darigol recalled, “When we were walking around, you didn’t look for a body. You smelled the body. And that’s what we did.”

TEd Kirby died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

“One officer kills another,” said Valdemar seriously. “That was simply unthinkable.”

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