Court This Week for Defendants in Three High-Profile Killings

By Anne La Jeunesse

Several major crime cases that originated in Santa Monica in 1998 during a freak year of double-digit murders -- some gang-related and some just plain weird -- are headed to court this week.

Slated to appear in Santa Monica Court this week are defendants involved in three high-profile killings -- the fatal shooting of German tourist Horst Fietze near a ritzy seaside hotel, the third accused strangler of 14-year-old Santa Monica resident Shevawn Geoghegan and two men who pleaded no contest to kicking and beating to death fellow transient Richard Wayne Bingle who was partially buried in the sands of Santa Monica Beach.

A preliminary hearing is tentatively set for Wednesday in the case against the accused killers of Fietze, who was slain outside the Lowes Santa Monica Beach Hotel during the final night of his United States vacation while he took a stroll with his wife and another couple.

However, the preliminary hearing, to decide whether his accused killers, Roshana Latiesha Roberts, 19, Lamont Dion Santos, 21 and Tyrina Lakeisha Griffin, 18, will face trial, may occur any time within the following 19 days.

A fourth suspect in Fietze's killing, 22-year-old Paul Carpenter remains at large.

Transients Robert Bernard Barkman, 26, and Mark Anthony Roberts, 35, who each pleaded no contest last month to charges of voluntary manslaughter in the Nov.1, 1998 death of fellow street person Richard Wayne Bingle, 45, are scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.

Barkman and Roberts had originally been charged with murder in the brutal crime during which Bingle was beaten and kicked to death, and also sexually assaulted, according to Los Angeles County Coroner Department records.

Bingle's death, authorities said, resulted from an argument over money.

Bingle was part of a community of homeless people who frequently slumbered on Santa Monica beaches.

On Friday, Dennis Scott, a.k.a. Jimmy "Linus" Turner, 23, a fugitive drifter who evaded police for more than a year after allegedly strangling 14-year-old Santa Monica girl Shevawn Geoghegan in a squalid abandoned mental health clinic basement, is expected to be arraigned on a murder charge.

Two other individuals, drifter and alleged Satanist Glen Mason and runaway Elizabeth Mangham, have already been convicted in Shevawn's death, which occurred Feb. 24, 1998. Mason was convicted by a jury of first degree murder following a month-long trial, and Mangham shortly thereafter pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter. Mason faces life in prison without parole, and Mangham, 18, will be sentenced to 11 years in state prison.

Scott, who was apprehended in Alabama after police received tips from viewers of the popular television show "America's Most Wanted," is being held without bail pending his arraignment.