News Articles

Part 2

While a jury will have to decide, probably later this spring, if Sgt. Scott Ansman is culpable in the battering death of JoAnn Crystal Harris last August at the National Guard Armory, prosecution witnesses at Thursday’s preliminary hearing characterized him as a “desperate” figure caught in an emotional vise.

The murder suspect’s problem was far simpler than the elusive solution:

When you are fathering babies with your wife and your girlfriend just months apart — and you don’t want your wife to know about the other woman — how do you cloak the non-marital indiscretion?

The Gateway Neighborhood Assn. hosted its first in a series of six
development study sessions on Tuesday night at the Culver City
store Livingreen.

Thirty-five persons, drawn from various Culver City neighborhoods, were in attendance to hear Community Development Director Sol
Blumenfeld talk about the city planning process, including requirements a builder must meet prior to receiving a building permit.

Part 1

At a preliminary hearing wringing wet with pathos, Armory murder suspect Scott Ansman today was portrayed by a parade of witnesses as a desperate father-to-be who went shopping, almost wantonly, for a hit man in the weeks before JoAnn Harris’s violent death last Aug. 24.

Contradicting the National Guard sergeant’s earlier assertions that Ms. Harris merely was an acquaintance and her pregnancy was a one-time fluke, no fewer than three of the10 witnesses said the defendant asked them if they knew of anyone who could do harm to the victim.

A prospective West Los Angeles street gang member, who supposedly was making a test run to prove his mettle, was convicted yesterday of coldly murdering the Bosch brothers, Michael and Timothy, 4 1/2 years ago in Culver West Park.

Anthony Covarrubias, whom Culver City police have had in their sights since the summer after the grisly double homicide, was found guilty of two counts of murder in the first degree, with special circumstances.

Following the two-week jury trial at the Airport Courthouse, sentencing is scheduled for early spring.

Diane E. Watson, Member of Congress, representing California's 33rd District, today has endorsed Dr. Luther Henderson for the City Council of Culver City in the April 8 election.

A 16-year Culver City resident, Dr. Henderson was appointed to the Cultural Affairs Commission seven years ago, and he is once again Chair of the Commission.

Part 3

National Guard veteran Scott Ansman says the pregnant young woman he is charged with murdering six months ago last week was only “an acquaintance,” not his girlfriend, as JoAnn Crystal Harris has been identified from the beginning.

Through his mother, Marilyn Ansman, who relayed her son’s startling claim, Sgt. Ansman’s position is that Ms. Harris’s pregnancy was a fluke, resulting from a “onetime” fling.

The School Board —two new members and three holdovers —may be finding out that Steve Gourley, brash and flamboyant as ever, takes some getting used to.

After one of his predicted — and feared — out-of-the-culture observations at his second School Board meeting last night, new member Mr. Gourley said all three veteran colleagues “looked at me as if I were from outer space.”

Dale Jones — a revered name from Culver City’s past that was invoked twice at last night’s City Council meeting — offered a soothing coda this afternoon to the rumble over the Sister Cities Committee’s revised relationship with City Hall.

After digesting the Council’s plan to make the Committee pay for its own liability insurance while continuing the yearly funding at the same rate of $14,000, Mr. Jones said:

“I think Sister Cities will be fine, as long as the insurance does not cost an arm and a leg. I can’t imagine the insurance being more than $3,000. But we will have to wait. They may have to hold a fundraiser or two, which they haven’t done since I was there.”

Part 3

[Editor’s Note: See Part 2 of the interview with Ronni Cooper, president of the Ladera Heights Civic Assn., in her home in racially mixed Ladera Heights, under News, “ From Ladera: Cataloguing the Decline and Fall of Inglewood Schools,” Jan. 25.]

In the final installment in this series discussing the proposal by Ladera Heights’ families to transfer their children from Inglewood public schools to Culver City, Ronni Cooper talks about her recent “encouraging” meeting with Dr. Myrna Rivera Cote, the Superintendent of the School District since last January — and much fierier topics.

Shaken and sweating out their liability in the short-term, the leaders of one of Culver City’s historic iconic groups, the Sister Cities Committee, were feeling this morning like the young person forced out of his parents’ home well before he was prepared to venture into the scary world.

Affirming a judgment first expressed in the middle of last year — that Sister Cities had become a potential financial risk for City Hall — the City Council noisily voted unanimously last night to alter its relationship. The group now is free to pursue non-profit status or “expanded funding opportunities”.

It will continue to receive its $14,000 annual allocation, but the Committee will have to seek its own insurance.