In the first days after City Hall employee Paul Bilodeau was murdered at a lonely outpost in Fox Hills on Jan. 2 of last year, his grieving elderly mother, Margaret Bilodeau, said, plaintively:
“I don’t want to know who killed Paul. I want to know why.”
Dogged detectives in the Culver City Police Dept. may have satisfied the “who” portion of her puzzle three months ago when they fingered Myron Deshun Grant.
The “why” will have to be put aside until Mr. Grant’s case goes to trial. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 28.
A 25-year-old gang member, in a way Mr. Grant is a typically faceless member of that vast community, according to police. In his young life, he has committed almost enough felonies to cover one hand.
Not surprisingly he already was in jail when the cops designated him the likely assailant of Mr. Bilodeau, a high-flying professional soaring toward the epitome of his career. Project manager for the Fire Station No. 3 site on Bristol Parkway, the 45-year-old once-married bachelor was in his prime, socially and professionally, friends said, making his gundown even harder to accept.
The evident randomness of Mr. Bilodeau’s slaying is underscored by the fact that City Hall sources told the newspaper it was not widely known the victim often went back to work in the evenings in the trailer at the south end of the relatively remote, desolate property.
Today’s story is about how police found Mr. Grant.
Here is the route laid out by police sources:
For months, police were stumped. Thoroughly investigating Mr. Bilodeau’s background, they found personal information that provided potential motives.
Meanwhile, they harbored suspicions about Gabriel Fedida, Israeli-born owner of the construction company building the fire station. But every trail leading from him deadended.
Sources said that Mr. Bilodeau and Mr. Fedida were seen arguing on a number of occasions about the project. On the grounds, workers told police that Mr. Fedida had “a bad temper,” and “some considered him a loose cannon.”
In an interview with this newspaper, Mr. Fedida displayed his computer screen that reflected about a half-dozen emails sent by Mr. Bilodeau late on the afternoon of his murder.
On the night of the crime, on a barren property that did not attract pedestrians, police ultimately became convinced that randomness, not targeting, took over.
Perhaps between 7:30 and 8 on the first Friday evening of the new year, Mr. Bilodeau returned from dinner with a favorite elderly uncle to squeeze in a little more work in the otherwise unoccupied trailer that was his office for the duration.
Police say Mr. Grant, traveling by car, not necessarily alone, could have noticed one or two lights burning in the trailer and considered holding up the occupant.
If a holdup was the motive, it must have been complicated because friends of the victim say he always locked the trailer door behind him.
Whatever the reason, it seems clear Mr. Bilodeau resisted. He was shot in the torso, his body left lying in the doorway.
But before the killer stole away, he committed another gaffe that would eventually lasso him. He took Mr. Bilodeau’s cell phone.
In today’s small world, police say, that is almost like making an announcement, akin to donning a sandwich board painted in big red letters saying “I Did It.”
Later, when the suspect, in need of ready cash, pawned Mr. Bilodeau’s cell phone, a person whose identity police will not reveal, tipped off Culver City cops. That was the break they had been chasing for nearly a year.
The exact procedure police followed to identify Mr. Grant is not known, except that sources said “we could not have identified him without utilizing technology.”
When Culver City police were satisfied Mr. Grant represented their bullseye, they found him in County Jail downtown. He had been incarcerated since the LAPD picked him up late at night the last week of February in south Los Angeles.
