William Bill Pavelic | Zvonko Bill Pavelic | Bill Pavelic - Blog and Information

Los Angeles Times

July 31, 2004 Saturday 
Home Edition

BYLINE: Bill Dwyre

SECTION: SPORTS; Sports Desk; Part D; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 478 words

The American Olympic happy days continued, and Richie Cunningham and the Fonz undoubtedly were around to cheer.

ABC suffocated its viewers with celebrating American athletes, and the TV viewers seemed to love it. The Times, reacting to a late-breaking event of some magnitude, headlined the victory by the U.S. men’s gymnastics team “The Miracle of L.A.”

The team, with Mitch Gaylord seeking additional points by risking his signa-ture move, the Gaylord III, and hitting it, not only won gold for the first time in men’s gymnastics, but got an Olympic men’s gymnastics medal for the first time in 52 years.

Richard Hoffer, now of Sports Illustrated, waxed eloquent on deadline: “They had flown, flared, floated … would they ever come down?”

The next day, critics speculated that, had the Soviet-bloc countries com-peted, the Americans never would have won the gold. It was pointed out, however, that China, which had finished second, had beaten the Soviets along the way.

Life was just as red, white and blue at the swim venue at USC. Five finals were held, and five Americans won.

Rowdy Gaines, one who had been victimized by Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the Moscow Olympics, took the 100 freestyle, his time of 49.80 seconds beating the Olympic record of 49.99 set by Jim Montgomery in the ‘76 Games. Theresa Andrews took the 100 backstroke, then marched over and presented her gold medal to her 20-year-old brother, two years younger than she. He had been paralyzed after a bike accident and she had taken a year off from swimming to help with his care.

The demonstration sport of baseball was contributing greatly to the L.A. com-mittee’s bottom line, drawing 52,319 at Dodger Stadium to watch the U.S. team beat Taiwan, 2-1.

The rowing venue at Lake Casitas was having so much trouble with midday wind that some of its events were started at 7:30 a.m.

Vonnie Gros, the U.S. women’s field hockey coach, was pleasantly surprised by the lack of smog. She had trained her team in Pennsylvania, and to get ready for Southern California, had asked officials at Ursinus College to back up four cars to the door of the gym and turn on their engines. Ursinus officials had refused.

News leaked out that Lord Killanin, president of the International Olympic Committee until 1980, and the man who had threatened to take the Games from Los Angeles because of lack of public funding until Mayor Tom Bradley called his bluff, had been rescued by an LAPD officer named Bill Pavelic. Killanin, choking on food at an L.A. restaurant, was saved when Pavelic pounded on his back five or six times. Several unidentified members of the LAOOC said they wished they had been there to help.

Sen. Bill Bradley, the former basketball star, was quoted as saying that Ath-ens should be made the permanent home of the Olympics. Twenty years to the day later, the Greeks were finishing the main Olympic Stadium.

LOAD-DATE: July 31, 2004

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: (no caption) 

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Tags: Bill Pavelic, william

Ventura County Star (California)

January 7, 2003 Tuesday

BYLINE: Aron Miller; amiller@insidevc.com

SECTION: News; Pg. A01

LENGTH: 827 words

The Andrew Luster date-rape trial continued Monday with one glaring absence — Andrew Luster.

The Max Factor heir failed to show up in court after a two-week break for the holidays, and the trial judge declared him a fugitive and issued a no-bail war-rant for his arrest.

“The chances of getting Mr. Luster back here may be slim,” Ventura County Su-perior Court Judge Ken Riley said.

Luster was last heard from Friday morning, when he checked in with the proba-tion officer monitoring his release on $1 million bail. When he didn’t call the officer when he was supposed to 12 hours later, the authorities got antsy.

Various police agencies were searching for him Monday, assuming he had fled because he anticipated being convicted and facing 150 years in prison.

But his defense attorney, Roger Diamond, was not ready to concede that his client skipped town voluntarily.

“We have a man who is presumed innocent who is not here this morning,”Diamond told the judge. “We do not know why he is not here. There are innocent explana-tions as to why, or it could be the opposite.”

Diamond continued that Luster could have been “kidnapped, harmed in some way” or was the victim of “a tragic accident.”

Riley wasn’t buying it. “Mr. Luster is the one who probably … fled the country,” he said. “He is gone, Mr. Diamond.”

In deciding to call Luster a fugitive, Riley took into account what detec-tives found — or did not find — when they served a search warrant on his Mus-sel Shoal home over the weekend.

When police entered the house, Luster was gone, as was his sport utility ve-hicle, his dog, most of his clothing and his treasured Chumash artifacts, Senior Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox told the judge. The house was locked, the shades were drawn and a stack of unopened mail sat on a table.

Deputy District Attorney Anthony Wold asked Riley to question the defense team about its knowledge of Luster’s whereabouts. Both of his attorneys said they had expected Luster to show up Monday and had no idea where he was.

Diamond called Luster “very optimistic” about how the trial was going for him, adding, “The last thing I wanted was for Mr. Luster not to be here today.”

Defense investigator Bill Pavelic declined to answer the judge’s questions, then, in an odd twist, took the witness stand and adamantly denied he had any-thing to do with Luster’s disappearance.

“It’s insulting that you would even ask that, and you know damn well that is not true,” Bill Pavelic told Wold.

After his testimony, he quit the case, citing how poorly he was treated in court.

Meanwhile, the trial continued without Luster, which can occur under state law if the defendant voluntarily does not appear in court.

When the jury returned to the courtroom, Riley carefully noted the empty chair at the defense table.

“One thing you are not to pay attention to is that we are proceeding today in Mr. Luster’s absence,” he said.

Luster, 39, Factor’s great-grandson, has pleaded not guilty to 87 criminal counts and is accused of using the drug gammahydroxybutyrate, or GHB, to knock out three women and rape them, videotaping two of the encounters.

His defense was that he was simply filming pornographic movies and the women were playacting.

Before the two-week break for the holidays, the jury already had viewed the first tape, which shows Luster performing various sex acts on a seemingly uncon-scious woman. Jurors also heard testimony from that woman.

On Monday, testimony continued with the playing of the second videotape, which offers much of the same activity as the first. The tape was seized soon after Luster’s July 2000 arrest. It is labeled “Shauna GHBing.”

The alleged victim was 17 when the tape was recorded. It shows her lying on her back in Luster’s bed.

During much of the tape, she is heard snoring loudly.

Luster describes for the camera how some people dream of Christmas and Thanksgiving, times to spend with loved ones.

“I dream of this,” he says. “A strawberry blonde passed out on my bed.”

Near the end of the tape, he continues. “Welcome to my room. What’s this?” he says, zooming in on an apparently passed-out Shauna. “That’s exactly what I like in my room. A passed-out, beautiful girl.”

Shauna, now 23, testified Monday she had no memory of the encounter and never had consensual sex with Luster, although they “made out” once in his Jacuzzi in 1996. The alleged rape occurred in December 1997.

When police told her she might be a rape victim and showed her the tape, she said she was shocked.

“It was very disgusting to me,” she said. “It was like seeing yourself raped in the third person and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Before excusing the jury for the day, Riley made an extra effort to remind them to avoid any news about the trial, noting there undoubtedly would be plenty of media attention today.

The case continues today in Courtroom 43, with or without Luster.

LOAD-DATE: January 14, 2003

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Defense team members listen Monday as Judge Ken Riley declares absen-tAndrew Luster to be a fugitive.
Matt McClain / Star staff

Matt McClain / Star staff

Defense attorneys Roger Diamond, left, and Kiana Sloan Hillier, right,turn to the courtroom audience as subpoenaed witnesses’ names are called tosee if they were present Monday. Between them is investigator Bill Pavelic,who later in the day quit the defense team.

Tags: Bill Pavelic

USA TODAY

October 6, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION

BYLINE: Gale Holland; Richard Price

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A

LENGTH: 564 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

 O.J. Simpson’s defense team sustained another string of courtroom defeats Wednesday, the most critical a failed attempt to challenge the initial police search of the defendant’s estate.
But some analysts suggested his lawyers had only themselves to blame - that in their push for a speedy trial, they may have moved too hastily.

“They shot themselves in the foot,” said UCLA law professor Peter Arenella. Added ex-prosecutor Roger Cossack, on CNN, “Those who chase speedy justice some-times catch it.”

Their point is that the lawyers chose the unusual path of challenging the search in July during the preliminary hearing, at a stage when they lacked enough information for a full fight.

Arguing that police lied when they said they vaulted the estate wall to save lives, the lawyers said detectives saw Simpson as a suspect from the start. But they lost that challenge - and they can reopen the issue only if they offer new evidence not available at the time of the original ruling.

The defense did offer new evidence Wednesday: a letter from detective Mark Fuhrman establishing he had past knowledge of domestic violence between Simpson and his ex-wife; and phone records suggesting police may have vaulted the estate wall before they tried phoning the home instead of after, as they testified.

But Judge Lance Ito accepted the prosecution’s argument that the defense could have acquired the same evidence back at the preliminary hearing.

Example: When Fuhrman originally testified, he mentioned having been at Simp-son’s estate in 1985 - a reference to prior knowledge of trouble there. Ito ruled defense lawyers could have pressed the matter then but didn’t.
The judge’s ruling did carry several asterisks, however.

Still to be determined is whether the defense could have known earlier about Fuhrman’s racist remarks in a 1980s lawsuit and about allegations he planted evidence in another case - significant to Simpson because it was Fuhrman who says he found a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate.

The prosecution says a Simpson team investigator, Bill Pavelic knew about those issues from a previous case. The defense denies it.

Also, the defense is waiting for copies of police transmissions from the night of the murder. If fresh evidence emerges from those, the defense can chal-lenge the search again.

Despite the setback, some saw the defense effort Wednesday as a victory in questioning police honesty. “The jury pool’s been told to avoid publicity, but they’re out there listening,” said civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell.

Simpson, 47, has pleaded innocent to the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Court resumes at 9 a.m. PT today with more battling over whether to toss out evidence seized from Simpson’s Bronco after it was impounded.

A police towing lot owner testified to an employee burglary of the Bronco, important because it could have compromised evidence but also because it led to the loss of a gasoline sales receipt showing Nicole drove the Bronco shortly be-fore her death.

That’s critical because preliminary DNA tests matched a bloody footprint on the Bronco’s carpeting to Nicole’s blood type, according to news leaks.

Also Wednesday, the defense filed a 107-page motion to exclude DNA evidence. Reasons: sloppy police handling of blood, lab errors and invalid statistics used to match minority blood types.

LOAD-DATE: October 07, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, b/w, Mike Nelson

THE NATION; See related story; 03A

Tags: Bill Pavelic

The Boston Herald

July 22, 1994 Friday THIRD EDITION

Investigators make formidable team

BYLINE: HELEN KENNEDY

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 004

LENGTH: 277 words

The detectives hired to help clear O.J. Simpson include a respected veteran gumshoe and a bitter former Los Angeles police officer with a possible grudge against the department. John McNally, a former New York City police detective sergeant who joined the case Wednesday, has been the right hand of Simpson’s lawyers for 20 years.

‘He’s a top-notch investigator who is excellent in interviewing and reinter-viewing witnesses,’ said attorney Dan Leonard, partner of Simpson defense attor-ney F. Lee Bailey. McNally is best known for his single-handed 1964 arrest of notorious jewel thief Jack ‘Murf the Surf’ Murphy. He also spent three years working on the Patty Hearst bank robbery with Bailey and Boston lawyer J. Albert Johnson, who called McNally ‘extremely thorough and highly effective.’

The other investigator, Zvonko G. ‘Bill’ Pavelic, retired abruptly from the LAPD in 1992 - just before passing the 20-year mark which would have allowed him to collect his pension. Bill Pavelic, who often publicly attacked the LAPD and former chief Darryl Gates, told the Associated Press he quit because he was ’sick and tired of watching innocent people get framed, especially members of minority groups.’

Bill Pavelic was originally scheduled to be called as a witness in the Reginald Denny beating case to testify that the black men being charged were victims of a racist department. Prosecutors called Bill Pavelic angry, bitter and paranoid.

Mike Pirouzian, president of Private Investigators of California, said nei-ther detective has a private investigators license and questioned whether any evidence they turn up would be legally admissable.

LOAD-DATE: March 08, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Tags: Bill Pavelic, Pavelic Bill, William Pavelic, Zvonko Pavelic