The man police suspect of killing a former Cal State Long Beach basketball player and his fiancee may have done so out of revenge for the loss of his Los Angeles Police Department job, police said at a news conference Wednesday night.
The suspect, Christopher Jordan Dorner of La Palma, on Monday posted an online "manifesto"—posted by the Venice 311 website—in which he blamed Randy Quan, a retired LAPD officer who became a lawyer, for his firing in 2009, said Irvine Police Department Chief David Maggard.
Quan is the father of Monica Quan, a Cal State Fullerton assistant women's basketball coach and the fiancee of Keith Lawrence, a former star basketball player from Moorpark. He had graduated from the Ventura Sheriff's Academy and more recently has been a public safety officer at the University of Southern California. Quan played two years at CSULB before transferring to Concordia University in Irvine, where she met Lawrence, also a basketball player.
The couple's tie to the suspected killer were apparently only via association.
Directly addressing Quan and specific other law enforcement personnel, Dorner threatened their family members.
"Look your wives/husbands and surviving children directly in the face and tell them the truth as to why your children are dead," he wrote in his manifesto.
According to an October 2011 Second District California Court of Appeals document, Dorner's employment with the LAPD was terminated for making false statements. Dorner had filed a complaint against his field training officer, accusing her of kicking a suspect—a claim the LAPD's Board of Rights found to be false, according to the court document. Dorner was formally charged on two counts of making false statements and one count of making a personnel complaint he knew or should have known was false, the document said.
Dorner filed a petition in Superior Court, seeking to have the board's decision overturned, but a judge denied it. Dorner then went on to file an appeal, which he also lost, the document shows.
According to his testimony as reported by the appellate court document, Dorner graduated from the police academy in February 2006, but left for a 13-month military deployment in November of that year. He returned to the LAPD in July 2007 and was on probation and assigned to the San Pedro area, where the incident in question took place.
After reviewing evidence, including testimony of police personnel and other witnesses, the Board of Rights could not find that the field training officer's kicking of a suspect, as reported by Dorner, actually occurred. The only collaborating testimony came from the supposed victim, who was mentally ill and could not give an accurate account of the incident, the court document said.
Further, "The Board found there was evidence that appellant had a motive to make a false complaint, citing Sergeant Evans's testimony that appellant was going to receive an unsatisfactory probationary rating if he did not improve his performance and that the kicks were reported the day after appellant received an evaluation," the document reported.
The appeals court rejected Dorner's contentions.
In the so-called manifesto Dorner wrote that he didn't mind dying, because he died on Jan. 2, 2009, the day he was fired from the LAPD. Claiming the department cost him his law and Naval careers as well as his relationships with family members and friends, Dorner wrote he had exahsted all available means at obtaining his name back, a theme repeated in the manifesto.
"I have attempted all legal court efforts within appeals at the Superior Courts and California Appellate courts," he wrote. "This is my last resort. The LAPD has suppressed the truth and it has now lead to deadly consequences."
—City News Service and Nancy Wride contributed to this report.
