The Probable Killer:John Michael Ryan, Jr.

On April 1, 1983, Detective Andrew Monsue visited me at Sylmar Juvenile Hall. I told him about John Michael Ryan, Jr. — my former roommate, inside the family home the day before the murder, refused money by my mother, gone. Monsue took notes, then flew to Gulfport, Mississippi, to interview him.^460A

Monsue later admitted under oath he had never considered anyone but me a suspect.¹⁶⁴ The predisposition showed in Gulfport. He opened his May 4 interview by telling Ryan the only reason he had come was to clear him¹⁶⁵ — and afterward reported he had "CONVINCINGLY CLEAR[ED]" him.⁴⁶¹ The record flatly contradicts the claim. What follows is the evidence Monsue had in hand and chose to ignore.

1. Ryan arrived in the San Fernando Valley on March 6 — 1,700 miles from Gulfport, four days before my mother was robbed and murdered.⁴⁶⁴ Four hours after the approx. 11:00 am attack, he checked into a Hollywood motel twelve miles from the house.⁴⁸³ He left California the next day.⁴⁶⁵
2. Ryan was inside the Lisker home on March 9 — the day before the murder — asking my mother for money.⁴⁶⁶ She said no.
3. A call from the Lisker phone at 10:22 A.M. on March 10 went to a number that differed from Ryan's mother's by one digit — a "2" where hers was a "6." *
   * While Bruce still has the original March 1983 phone bill, in the interest of Ryan's mother's privacy (who still uses the number) he will release the information contained in the bill only to the courts examining this matter.

   I reached the driveway at roughly 11:00 A.M.,¹⁸⁰ called the fire department at 11:26,⁴⁵⁴ paramedics arrived at 11:36. The State argued my mother could not have survived much longer than forty-five minutes without treatment,⁵⁶¹ placing that 10:22 call inside the attack window. The odds that three of four final digits of a randomly dialed number match Ryan's mother's, from that house, on that day, are vanishingly small.

4. $150.00 was stolen from my mother's purse on March 10⁴⁶⁷ and never recovered.⁴⁶⁸ Ryan claimed he left Gulfport with $50.00.⁴⁶⁹ The expenses he himself acknowledged to Monsue exceeded that figure before the trip was over:
   • March 6 — city bus, L.A. Bus Station to Sepulveda & Victory: $1.40.⁴⁷⁰
   • March 6 — taxi south on Sepulveda to Burbank Boulevard: approx. $3.50.⁵¹² †
   • March 9 — city bus, Van Nuys toward Hollywood: 80¢.⁴⁷²
   • March 10 — room #18, Hollywood Tropics Motel: $21.50.⁴⁷³
   • March 10 — beer at a bar: approx. $1.00.⁴⁷⁴ †
   • March 10 — "nickel bag" of marijuana: $5.00.⁴⁷⁵
   • March 10 — city bus back to Hollywood: 80¢.⁴⁷⁶
   • March 10 — sold two joints (credit): −$2.00.⁴⁷⁷
   • March 11 — Trailways bus, L.A. to Phoenix: $23.00.⁴⁷⁸
   • Unspecified dates — sandwich: approx. $1.00;⁴⁷⁹ † cigarettes: approx. 90¢;⁴⁸⁰ † potato chips: approx. 40¢;⁴⁸⁰ † Coca-Cola: approx. 35¢.⁴⁸⁰ †
   † Since no exact costs were specified in the interview for the indicated expenditures, estimated 1983 prices are listed here. Every effort has been made to use conservative (i.e., low) estimates out of fairness to Ryan. But even these clearly illustrate the impossibility of his story.

   Monsue's own notes record Ryan leaving Gulfport with "$50 IN CASH AND A BUS TICKET."⁴⁸¹ By that figure he overspent by $7.65 — before any transit expense for the 1,700-mile trip. But Ryan's father told Monsue his son had not had fifty dollars, only the twenty given him by the Harrison County Detention Center on release.⁶⁸⁰ Deficit: $37.65. With $20.00 in hand Ryan could not have afforded the $21.50 motel room rented four hours after my mother was robbed of $150.00.

   Then the return leg. The father reported his son arrived at the Gulfport bus station with $60.00.⁶⁸¹ Starting with $20.00 and spending a documented minimum of $57.65, Ryan got home with $60.00 — meaning he acquired at least $97.65 along the way. That is the amount stolen from my mother, less whatever he spent. Monsue interviewed the father; that he failed to learn these facts strains credulity, and makes it the more troubling that he declared Ryan cleared and walked away.

5. Ryan claimed he was at the Hollywood Tropics Motel — ten miles from the house — at 11:00 A.M., minutes after the attack.^{482 483 484} The alibi collapsed when Monsue obtained the motel records: actual check-in, 3:00 P.M.⁴⁸⁵
6. Ryan registered at the motel under the alias "Mark Smith,"⁴⁸⁶ with no coherent explanation.⁴⁸⁷ A false name is consistent with a person who has just committed a violent crime.
7. The night before leaving Gulfport, Ryan placed several calls into the area around the Lisker home — two to Van Nuys.⁴⁸⁸ They may have reached an accomplice, or checked my or my parents' whereabouts. Despite CARD's resources, Monsue appears never to have identified the recipients; he asked Ryan and accepted the answer.
8. Ryan claimed that on the morning of the murder he had been in a violent knife fight in which he stabbed an unidentified Black man in the shoulder.⁴⁸⁹ Entirely unsubstantiated — and conveniently positioned to explain any blood a witness, such as the motel clerk, might have noticed on his clothing, hands, or face after a five-weapon attack. Monsue never challenged him, nor does he appear to have checked local hospitals.
9. Ryan said he used "Mark Smith" because he was frightened after the knife fight.⁴⁹⁰ But he had earlier told Monsue he checked into the motel before the fight occurred.⁴⁸⁹ Monsue noted the contradiction, then dropped it.
10. Before Monsue arrived, Ryan told Gulfport Sheriff's investigator J.W. Langford he had spent the night before the murder — March 9 into March 10 — walking the streets.⁴⁹¹ To Monsue he reversed course: he had slept in either Laurel or Coldwater Canyon.⁴⁹² Monsue had Langford's full report in hand before traveling. He never confronted the contradiction.
11. Ryan said he could not remember which canyon, Laurel or Coldwater.⁴⁹² Yet he had recently been an in-patient at Coldwater Hospital's drug-abuse ward, on Coldwater Canyon.⁴⁹³ A canyon with a personal connection is not difficult to recall.
12. Ryan's only lodging expense over the entire five-day trip came hours after my mother was attacked and left for dead.⁴⁹⁴ March 10 was also the first moment he could have afforded the $21.50 room, having left Gulfport with $20.00. [Cf. § VII (4)]
13. Ryan had a violent history — aggression, threats of murder, knives.⁴⁹⁵ His juvenile record reportedly includes a knife assault that sent him to the California Youth Authority's Ventura School, which he boasted about. His father told Monsue Ryan had always been extremely violent,⁶⁸² dishonest,⁶⁸³ and deeply fascinated with knives.⁶⁸⁸ In 1993, Ryan threatened to kill his father and stepmother,⁶⁸⁴ destroyed his father's office, threatened the responding St. Johns County, Florida, Sheriff's deputy with death, and assaulted that officer before being subdued.⁶⁸⁵ His father did not know whether his son had killed my mother — but had no doubt he was "ABSOLUTELY CAPABLE OF IT."⁶⁸⁶
14. Ryan knew the layout of the Lisker home — every room that held a weapon used in the attack, and where money was kept. He had been in the kitchen less than twenty-four hours before the murder⁴⁹⁶ — where the steak knives were stored — and on prior visits in my bedroom⁶⁶⁵ and my parents'. Those rooms held the trophy⁴⁹⁷ and exercise-bar⁴⁹⁸ weapons.
15. Ryan had firsthand knowledge of the divisions within the Lisker family — particularly, by his own account, between me and my mother.⁴⁹⁹ Anyone with that knowledge would have understood that an attack on her would focus suspicion on me, giving the perpetrator time to escape, clean up, and destroy evidence.
16. Ryan made a point of his uncertainty about dates and times throughout his account,⁵⁰⁰ yet was strangely certain he had not seen me on March 10.⁵⁰¹ He had no reason to know the date of the murder before Monsue arrived; he was not told of my arrest until roughly April 18, when Gulfport detained him at Monsue's request. If every other date was uncertain, why not that one? The most obvious explanation: he already knew it was the day my mother was murdered — because he was there.
17. Ryan denied ever using freebase. His counselors at the Palmer Drug Abuse Program told Monsue he had.⁵⁰²
18. Ryan had no apparent reason to travel 1,700 miles to Los Angeles. No job prospects. No place to stay.⁵⁰³
19. Ryan justified the trip by claiming tensions with his father were so severe he had to escape Gulfport.⁵⁰⁴ He also told Monsue he had intended to return to Gulfport from the moment he left.⁵⁰⁵ Monsue never confronted the contradiction.
20. Ryan carried a yellow tote bag through the Los Angeles trip. Its handles were yellow cord.⁵⁰⁶ ‡ When I found my mother, a length of bloody yellow cord was wrapped around her throat — consistent with the ligature marks documented at autopsy.⁶³⁰ The cord's origin was never determined⁵⁰⁸ and is not attributable to anyone but Ryan and his bag.
    ‡ In fairness, it should be noted that Bruce is presently the only witness that Ryan's bag used such cord for handles.
21. Two days before the murder, Ryan was walking directly toward the Lisker home. I intercepted him on Orion Avenue, drove him to the freeway on-ramp at Haskell Avenue — his claimed destination — and dropped him off.⁵⁰⁹ In Gulfport he drew Monsue a map showing how close to the house he had been. Monsue never raised the proximity.
22. During the months Ryan slept on my couch, he came to treat the Lisker home as a ready source of cash — earned or stolen.⁵¹⁰
23. There were no signs of forced entry²⁵⁰ other than the kitchen window I had myself entered through.²⁵⁷ The killer was almost certainly known to my mother and admitted by her. Ryan frequented the home⁵¹⁰ and had demonstrated as much less than twenty-four hours earlier, when he knocked and was received.^{511 466 496}
24. Ryan said he slept in the carports at Burbank and Sepulveda because they were the closest suitable ones to his bus stop at Victory and Sepulveda.^{512 514} False. Three hundred feet north of Victory and Sepulveda stood my apartment at 6500 Sepulveda — where he had previously slept on my couch — and the building immediately north had enclosed, street-hidden carports. Burbank and Sepulveda, by contrast, sits roughly halfway between my apartment and the Lisker home; the pedestrian tunnel under the San Diego Freeway at Camarillo Street shortens the walk further. The Orion Avenue point where I intercepted Ryan on March 8 [Cf. § VII (21)] lies between Camarillo and Huston — consistent with his having come through that tunnel toward the house. His chosen carport placed him ideally to move into and out of the neighborhood. Monsue never raised any of this.
25. Ryan told Monsue he had been aggressively rationing money throughout the trip — barely eating, spending as little as possible.⁵¹⁵ Yet when he visited my mother on March 9, by his own account nearly starving five days from home, he accepted only a glass of water from a woman who had been a gracious host on prior visits.⁴⁶⁶ Monsue never raised the inconsistency.
26. Less than two months after his former roommate's arrest for that roommate's mother's murder, Ryan explained his vague and contradictory account: "I HAVEN'T BEEN REALLY THINKING MUCH OF IT — CAUSE I DIDN'T DO IT."⁵⁰⁰ Not believable. He had spent time with my mother twenty-four hours before her murder, then sat in a Gulfport jail cell twenty-one days waiting for the LAPD detectives he knew were coming.⁵¹⁸ Rather than press, Monsue encouraged him to get his story straight⁵⁰⁰ and reassured him he was not a suspect.¹⁶⁵
27. Ryan told Monsue he could only afford a bus ticket as far as Phoenix and hitchhiked the rest of the way home.⁴⁷⁸ His father reported the lie: Ryan rode a bus the whole way and was picked up at the Gulfport bus station.⁶⁸⁷ Monsue had interviewed the father, noted no pickup, and never confronted Ryan — or the implication that he had somehow afforded a full ticket despite his claimed finances.
28. Ryan never asked Langford or Monsue the obvious question: how had my mother been killed? It is almost as if he already knew.
29. Ryan denied a fascination with knives.⁶⁹² His father confirmed he had one.⁶⁸⁸ I had told Monsue the same on April 1.^460A Monsue accepted the denial — even though Ryan, during the same interview, admitted practicing knife-throwing into my apartment door.⁶⁹²
30. Ryan's father asked his son directly whether he knew anything about my mother's murder. Ryan became extremely upset. His father never raised the subject again.⁶⁸⁹
31. Ryan offered two explanations for the "Mark Smith" alias.⁴⁸⁷ First, as noted [Cf. § VII (9)], fear from the knife fight — but he had told Monsue he checked in before the fight. Second, that his real ID showed him at sixteen and motels required guests to be eighteen. Yet he had used his father's old Navy base ID to buy beer at a bar — an ID that must have listed him at twenty-one. He could have rented the room on that same ID under his own name (also his father's, differing only in "Sr." versus "Jr.") — unless he meant to conceal his identity. Monsue never confronted the obvious lie.

Ryan's thinly veiled lies must have been apparent to a trained homicide detective. He was summarily cleared, and the prosecution of me continued uninterrupted.

On June 28, 1996 — two days after what would have been my mother's eightieth birthday — Ryan ended his life by heroin and alcohol overdose.⁶⁹⁶ His suicide note made no mention of me or the murder. Whatever his role, whoever his accomplices, he took the truth with him.

I have tried to forgive him — not for his benefit, but for mine. I do not want to carry the poison of hatred, and by most measures I have succeeded. Forgiveness is a process, not a decision. Still, the world is better off without him in it.