Identity crisis

On Friday, John Laurence Whitaker turned 61. But instead of playing with grandchildren or getting together with old friends, Whitaker celebrated in the same old place he was last year, the year before that and the year before that — the Harbor Justice Center jail in Orange County.

His moustache and goatee are graying and must be almost white by now. And the six-foot-one-inch, 250-pound accused killer still cuts an imposing physical figure — that is, if he looks anything like the last time he was seen in court by the Weekly back in March 2007.

But even though the flamboyant Whitaker — also a convicted sex offender who disguised himself as a decorated Vietnam veteran nearly six years ago while running a volunteer mentoring program with the Pasadena Unified School District — has been in custody for nearly four years, he appears no closer to trial for two separate slayings than when he was first arrested.

After 32 court appearances, authorities in Orange County still don’t seem to know Whitaker’s real name. In fact, on May 27, the date of his last hearing, Whitaker didn’t even show up, because “He simply did not get on the bus” from the jail to the courthouse, said an Orange County District Attorney’s Office staff member, who was unable to explain why that happened.

But further complicating the public’s efforts to keep track of Whitaker’s case, the Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s Office both continue listing him under one of his primary aliases, Whitaker-Betances, and that apparently includes all of their records.

Whitaker’s attorney, Lewis Clapp of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, did not return calls for comment. Neither did prosecutor Matt Murphy of the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

“The thing about these old cases,” Murphy said in a previous interview, “is the defense always wants to test everything.” Murphy said if he objected to the defense’s request for DNA testing, it could be grounds for an appeal if Whitaker is convicted of strangling prostitute Patricia Anne Carpenter in Laguna Beach in 1983 or school administrator Bodil Cecelia Rasmussen in Santa Monica in 1975.

“I would rather just give it to them now. The results usually don’t change,” Murphy said of the DNA evidence that he believes links Whitaker to the two murders. “I’m really looking forward to getting into this trial. I can’t wait,” Murphy said at the time — two years ago.

“Basically it has been delay, delay, delay as much as possible,” said Rene Amy, a longtime schools critic and attorney who has kept an eye on the Whitaker case since the beginning. Amy was one of the first to say that Whitaker was a fraud after he learned that a veterans’ rights group was onto the deception and posting stories about it on its Web site. “One way to slow things down is to require a court order for anything and everything. It is a tactic to try and delay a court date as much as possible,” Amy explained. “They can drag this out for years.”

Whitaker was first incarcerated in 2004 under his real name, and he is also listed under that name on the Department of Justice Megan’s Law database for registered sexual offenders. However, that same Web site lists Whitaker’s whereabouts as unknown, despite his arrest four years ago and multiple court appearances during that time. Further, the Orange Country DA’s Office now lists his name as John Laurence Whitaker-Betances, as does the OC Sheriff’s Web site, along with a list of other aliases.

Correspondence sent recently from the Weekly to John Laurence Whitaker was returned with a quickly scrawled note, stating “No inmate with this name is in our custody.”

A few months after he suddenly disappeared from Pasadena, authorities in Oregon arrested Whitaker for failure to register as a sex offender in that state. At that time it was learned that Whitaker had been lying about his name and his tale of being a decorated Vietnam veteran. He wore military fatigues, a black military-style beret and once claimed to have gnawed through the neck of a Vietcong captor to escape a POW camp.

Whitaker, however, had registered with Pasadena police, only under his real name, John Laurence Whitaker, for sex crimes that he had committed against a 14-year-old boy back in New York in the 1970s.

During the five years that he lived in Pasadena under the name Whitaker-Betances, no one — including former PUSD Superintendent Percy Clark, who once gave Whitaker keys to the administration building and access to an office at district headquarters — suspected Whitaker’s real identity or his criminal past.

While in custody for the failure to register in Oregon, authorities said Whitaker was tied through DNA to the Carpenter and Rasmussen killings. Rasmussen and Whitaker apparently lived in the same apartment building, and he had been interviewed by investigators in relation to the murder.
Carpenter’s sister, Cynthia, said her sister was pretty tough and probably fought with her assailant. “I said the only way she didn't fight was if she was completely out of it,” she said in a 2006 interview with the Weekly. “I found out 23 years later that she did fight and that his skin was under her fingernails. She was no pushover.”

The skin particles were apparently all investigators needed to identify a suspect, provided that person’s DNA was already on file. It didn’t take long for forensics experts to come up with a match to Whitaker in both the Carpenter slaying and the Rasmussen strangulation, which was done with a pair of the victim’s pantyhose, according to Santa Monica police officials.

Whitaker has pleaded not guilty to both murder charges. His next court date is set for June 27, a hearing for — what else? — a defense motion to re-examine DNA evidence.

Ironically, Acting City Manager and Pasadena ex-Police Chief Bernard Melekian was a patrol sergeant in Santa Monica at the time of Rasmussen’s murder. In fact, Melekian responded to the call after her body was discovered.

“Homicides are very unique. You don’t forget the ones you go on,” Melekian said in a previous interview. “I always wondered what happened and if that crime had been solved.”