The mystery of National Guardsman Erik Hein’s whereabouts darkens and deepens.
Is somebody in authority playing Hein and Seek?
His testimony last year against Guard colleague Scott Allen Ansman was probably decisive in winning a conviction of Mr. Ansman — a life sentence without possibility of parole — for battering to death JoAnn Crystal Harris at Culver City’s National Guard Armory on Aug. 24, 2007.
Now that Martha Harris, mother of the victim, has brought a civil suit for negligence against the state, the Guard and Mr. Ansman, her lawyers have old and new questions for Mr. Hein.
If they could find him. They cannot.
One week from this morning, a Superior Court judge is scheduled to rule whether the state Attorney General’s office can be compelled to produce Mr. Hein for a deposition in anticipation of the civil suit hearing on Sept. 27. Ms. Harris’s lawyers seem confident tthe Attorney General’s office knows exactly where Mr. Hein is.
Almost mystically, the National Guard veteran has disappeared from his workplace following his transfer to still another Guard armory, at least his third posting in recent times.
A spokesperson for the Guard told the newspaper this morning that the apparently suddenly-hot property is absent from his workplace, with permission but without public explanation. “He will be away indefinitely,” the spokesperson said. “We don’t have a hard and firm date when he is coming back. But we know at some point he will be coming back.”
The spokesperson measured Mr. Hein’s disappearance at “about a week.”
