New Lead in Lester Garnier Case

[Stormer Phillips]

In the S.F. Chronicle today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BACU111ULH.DTL

[crystaldawn]

Originally Posted by Stormer Phillips

In the S.F. Chronicle today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BACU111ULH.DTL

Wow, very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

[Todd Mueller]

Originally Posted by Stormer Phillips

In the S.F. Chronicle today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BACU111ULH.DTL

Great job, Stormer! Thanks for the link.

This case always intrigued me very much. I always couldn't believe that had such trouble solving this.

Below is the updated article with the suspect named:

Suspect named in mysterious 20-year-old slaying of SF officer

Demian Bulwa, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writers

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

(06-03) 14:31 PDT WALNUT CREEK -- Investigators said today they believe a 44-year-old woman with a long criminal record and a history of crack cocaine use was directly involved in the mysterious slaying of an off-duty San Francisco police officer in a Walnut Creek parking lot nearly 20 years ago.

Catherine Kuntz, who once lived in the Bay Area but is now behind bars in Florida, has not been formally arrested or charged in the July 1988 fatal shooting of Lester Garnier, a 30-year-old vice officer who was found slumped over the steering wheel of his Corvette.

But Walnut Creek police Lt. Tim Schultz, speaking at a press conference today, said, "Investigators are confident she was at the homicide scene and confident she was involved, and we are calling her a suspect."

Schultz said police are hoping that new witnesses will come forward with information about Kuntz and her alleged role in Garnier's death. San Francisco is also offering a $250,000 reward for information that will lead to a successful prosecution.

Ever since the slaying, investigators had pursued leads, interviewing hundreds of people. But the case remained unsolved.

In 2002, new computer technology allowed San Francisco police to identify a fingerprint in Garnier's Corvette as belonging to Kuntz, Schultz said. He said investigators have spent subsequent years looking into Kuntz's background and speaking to her and those who know her.

At this point, investigators do not have enough evidence to charge Kuntz, said Schultz. He said he did not know how Kuntz knew Garnier and would not reveal any other evidence allegedly linking her to the killing. Schultz also declined to discuss police's theories about a motive.

"We're at a point now where we need to close a few more investigative leads," said Schultz, standing in front of several enlarged photographs of Kuntz," and we're hoping the public provides those to us."

Police said Kuntz is a native of Scotland with a noticeable accent who was in the Bay Area as a young woman because her ex-husband was assigned to the U.S. Navy's station in Concord. She is tall and thin, with blond hair.

During the late 1980s, police said, Kuntz lived in apartments in Martinez, Concord, Walnut Creek and Alameda and often traveled to Oakland. In 1990, she moved to Norfolk, Va., where she was arrested a year later for conspiracy to commit murder. She was later acquitted.

Recently, police said, she lived in a number of Florida cities. She is now incarcerated at a state prison in Ocala, Fla., on a probation violation related to a misdemeanor cocaine possession charge. She is using the last name "Wise" from a later marriage, police said.

Kuntz has also used the last name "Overend" and the nickname "Scotty," police said. Schultz called her a "known user of crack cocaine."

Garnier, an 8-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department who lived with his parents in Concord, was shot twice at close range as he sat in his blue 1984 Corvette on the night of July 10, 1988, at a shopping center at 1295 South Main Street in Walnut Creek.

The case became one of the biggest mysteries in the history of the San Francisco Police Department as investigators looked into a range of possible scenarios, including whether Garnier's slaying was linked to his police work.

On the night he was killed, Garnier left home about 8:45 p.m., then called a friend minutes later and said he wouldn't be able to keep plans to see a movie. A carpet layer working nearby reported hearing two or three shots about 11:15 p.m. coming from the vicinity of the parking lot where Garnier had parked his car.

Garnier's body was found at 7:30 a.m. the next day, slumped over the steering wheel of his car. He had been shot twice, in the right temple and the right side, with an AMT .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol. The gun has never been found.

His badge was found in the car, but Garnier had left both his 9mm and .357-caliber pistols at home.

The carpet layer reported seeing two women walk through the parking lot after the shots were fired, get into separate cars and drive off. Another witness reported seeing a skinny, blond woman get out of the passenger door of Garnier's 1984 Corvette, walk around the car and appear to look in the driver's window before walking away.

Walnut Creek police officials investigated the case because it happened in their jurisdiction, but that approach upset many San Francisco officers who felt their department should have been doing an investigation of Garnier's death.

Walnut Creek police apparently harbored concerns about working with San Francisco. In 1991, the FBI told The Chronicle that Walnut Creek authorities were "interested if someone in the (San Francisco) department was involved" in Garnier's killing.

Among other leads in the case, police looked into Garnier's work investigating a prostitution ring that specialized in underage girls and allegedly catered to influential civic leaders.

Garnier did surveillance of a Mission District brothel that was raided in April 1988. Among those indicted as patrons was Roger Boas, the city's former chief administrative officer who had recently campaigned unsuccessfully for mayor.

Shortly before he died, Garnier ran into a friend on the street and told him he was working on - in the friend's words - "an undercover case that was big" and involved well-known people.

Walnut Creek police, though, later told The Chronicle that they had been unable to find any link between the killing and the prostitution ring.

When The Chronicle began doing interviews for a 10-year anniversary piece on the Garnier case, the San Francisco Police Department opened its own investigation into the killing, saying it was willing to pursue all leads - even if it had to investigate whether Garnier had been involved in criminal activity.

Today, Walnut Creek and San Francisco police officials said they were pleased with the cooperation between the two departments.

Then-Deputy Chief John Willett, who headed the San Francisco investigation, said at the time that there were many views of Garnier - from someone who was "squeaky clean" to someone "semi in the fast lane with women, the Corvette, the cell phone." Among other things, Willett said, the department wanted to look at Garnier's contacts with prostitutes.

[supersally1974]

Originally Posted by Stormer Phillips

In the S.F. Chronicle today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BACU111ULH.DTL

Dude! Love, love LOVE your Stormer avatar. Gnnnn.... jealous.

[cuba_libre]

This was always a very interesting case! I hope this is the correct person and Lester's family can finally have some closure!

[Corky Kneivel]

Those sketch artists were KIND

http://www.dailypress.com/news/local...,4454402.story

[kadrmas15]

Ha! I was thinking the same thing Corky. Although to be fair, her prison mugshot is new and those sketches were from 20 years ago. Obviously the decades of drug abuse have hit her hard. She would have been 24 in 1988 at the time of the murder. She was actually charged in the early 1990's in Virginia with conspiracy to commit first degree murder after her husband was shot by the 17 year old daughter of a family friend. The husband survived and Catherine "scotty" Kuntz was acquitted of the conspiracy charge and released from custody and her and her husband were divorced in 1992. She is originally from Scotland and she met her husband when he was serving in the US Navy in 1985. They moved to California later that same year when he was sent there on assignment.

http://www.theledger.com/article/200...Calif__Slaying

[mphs95]

Originally Posted by Stormer Phillips

In the S.F. Chronicle today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BACU111ULH.DTL

That's cool. Hopefully there can be some resolution to this case. His family deserves that at least.

[kadrmas15]

Well, sadly , most of Lester's family is gone now. His sister Margo is still alive I think but his mother passed away in 1996 and his dad passed away in 2002. I do think this case and the investigation of it were bungled. There was infighting between the Walnut Creek PD and the San Francisco PD and the Walnut Creek PD wasted a lot of time trying to link the case to police corruption and actually trying to pin San Francisco cops for the murder.

[Todd Mueller]

Originally Posted by kadrmas15

Well, sadly , most of Lester's family is gone now. His sister Margo is still alive I think but his mother passed away in 1996 and his dad passed away in 2002. I do think this case and the investigation of it were bungled. There was infighting between the Walnut Creek PD and the San Francisco PD and the Walnut Creek PD wasted a lot of time trying to link the case to police corruption and actually trying to pin San Francisco cops for the murder.

You are spot on, kardrmas.

A shame his family couldn't see this and a bigger shame on Walnut Creek for being so stubborn from the start. Funny what happens when agencies see what they want to see and fail to see what is.

[kadrmas15]

Well, this story was posted on AMW.com here it is http://www.amw.com/features/feature_...il.cfm?id=2832

Now, you can see pictures of Catherine Kuntz and how she looked like in the late 1980's. She was never exactly the best looking one but she looked better then than now. She is due to be released from prison in Florida on Thursday. They are afraid she might run off to Scotland when she is released. I did notice though in the pictures from the late 80's of Kuntz that she did look similiar to the composites. Yes the composite artist was kind but you have to remember they were basing the sketch off of what the witnesses saw. While the witnesses saw Kuntz it was at night in a parking lot that had lights but the lights werent strong.

[bell83]

Just caught this, again, on The Site. I went looking, and found this article, in case anyone's interested.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MNL415IQOP.DTL

[Corky Kneivel]

There’s something fishy here. My radar is going off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the LE’s in Walnut Creek aren’t too hot and heavy actively pursuing this because of the hijinkey shenanigans they feel would be brought out in court. Nobody fought the deportation order too strenuously and she was deported for very inconsequential reasons: drug possession and failing a drug test.

[bell83]

Originally Posted by Corky Kneivel

There’s something fishy here. My radar is going off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the LE’s in Walnut Creek aren’t too hot and heavy actively pursuing this because of the hijinkey shenanigans they feel would be brought out in court. Nobody fought the deportation order too strenuously and she was deported for very inconsequential reasons: drug possession and failing a drug test.

Very possible, Corky. I don't have much knowledge with this case, but it does strike me as fantasically odd that a person wanted in connection with the murder of a police officer is able to be deported quickly, with no fight, and yet other people who are caught here illegally go through all kinds of legal s*** before being kicked back, IF they're kicked back, at all.