Hitmen: True Stories of Street Executions

by Wensley Clarkson

  But Phillip and Diana’s favourite pastime was frolicking waist-high in the warm Pacific Ocean. Nude swimming was a hell of a refreshing way to pass the time. Diana and Phillip adored that feeling when the foamy surf enveloped them. They used to say it was second only to making passionate love.

  But on El Capitan Beach during those swelteringly hot summer months of 1989, Diana began letting her mind wander to other, less innocent things as she lay sunbathing in the nude. She’d sometimes close her eyes in the bright sunlight and think about the passionate affair she was having with the manager of the El Capitan trailer park across the street.

  Diana Bogdanoff loved trailing her tongue down his neck and over his right nipple before biting gently into his soft skin. Then she moved back to his mouth and started probing deeper with her tongue. Running the tip right across his gums before pushing it deep into the full cavity of his mouth. Then she’d open her own mouth as wide as possible so that he could plunge his tongue deep into her throat. And Diana Bogdanoff never once considered her new husband, lying naked on the nudist beach just a few hundred yards away.

  She’d first met the handsome stranger a few days earlier when he helped the couple move into their new home. But the moment he caught her looking him up and down they both knew they’d end up in bed together. Diana adored making hot, steamy love with a new rampant, virile man. Naturally, she liked to be on top most of the time. She also loved to tease and tantalise him, getting him really close to climaxing then letting go for a split second. It always made him beg for more.

  But the greatest irony of all was that her husband of just a few months was lying on that nearby nudist beach ogling naked bodies, probably in just as excited a state. However Diana Bogdanoff preferred her new, young lover. She was willing and prepared to do anything to please him. As they lay there hot and sweaty after hours of lovemaking, she sat up and looked through the window to that nudest beach across the street and smiled to herself. Her husband got his pleasure watching naked bodies. She got her pleasure from performing the real thing. She realised her marriage was a sham – something she should never have undertaken in the first place. Now she needed a way out of it.

  ‘If you wanted to kill someone, how would you do it?’ she asked her secret lover as they nestled into each other’s bodies.

  He thought he was hearing things at first. Did she really just ask about killing someone moments after enjoying sex? But Diana Bogdanoff wasn’t finished.

  ‘Come on. A guy like you must know how to get someone killed.’

  Still he didn’t reply. The sex between them may well have been out of this world, but when she started talking about murdering her husband he began to wonder what sort of relationship he’d got himself into.

  However Diana Bogdanoff wasn’t deterred by her new lover’s reluctance to respond. Her mind remained fully focused on this particular subject. Killing Phillip would solve a lot of problems, so she carried on.

  ‘I thought about lacing his food with cocaine. D’you think that might work?’

  ‘No way. He’d just end up getting high and havin’ a great time.’

  ‘What about poison? What would be the best brand to use?’

  Diana’s lover decided to play along with her ‘game’. She couldn’t possibly be serious. Could she?

  ‘You wanna try getting some of that poison from those pencil trees that grow out near Morro Bay,’ he said almost lightheartedly.

  For the first time, he was starting to encourage her. He stopped in his tracks. Enough is enough. I must be crazy, he thought to himself. But Diana’s mind was already set.

  ‘Hey, that’s a great idea. Will you come with me and help me find some of those trees?’

  Her secret lover shook his head.

  ‘No way. You must be crazy. Forget it. Get a divorce if you’re so goddam unhappy.’

  Diana got out of bed in a sulky silence, put her clothes on and headed out of the one and only door to that trailer. She was furious that he wouldn’t help her. She’d have to find someone else who’d hatch a plan with her to kill her husband. That’s when she decided to turn to her beautiful 18-year-old daughter Stephanie for help.

  Diana Bogdanoff told Stephanie that husband Phillip had, ‘beaten me and abused me more than I can handle. I gotta do something.’ She was pretty convincing as a battered wife. The teenager sat, riveted by her mother’s appalling revelations. How could her step-father be such a beast?

  ‘You gotta help me kill him. It’s the only way,’ said Diana, close to crocodile tears.

  ‘But Mom. That’s murder you’re talkin’ about. Just get away from him. Just leave him.’

  ‘But I’ve got nothing. If I leave him, I’ll be out on the streets. If we kill him, at least I’ll get to keep the house and all our money and things.’

  ‘You’re crazy mom.’

  Like any self-respecting daughter, Stephanie was genuinely worried about her mother’s safety at the hands of her supposedly brutal husband, but to murder him seemed rather drastic. Meanwhile Diana Bogdanoff sensed her daughter’s sympathetic attitude. She decided to keep working on her until she had her ‘on side’.

  Over the next couple of months, Diana called up her daughter Stephanie at her home, 50 miles away in Bakersfield, and begged her to help her kill her ‘brutal’ husband. Initially she still got a definite ‘No Way’ response. But on the third attempt, Stephanie thought she sensed real panic in her mother’s voice and gave in.

  ‘I know this isn’t right but if it’s the only way then I guess we’ll have to do it,’ responded Stephanie.

  Diana Bogdanoff was delighted. She’d grown to despise Phillip even more over the previous few months. The only time when she felt truly happy was when she closed her eyes and thought about her passionate affairs with other men. So, with daughter Stephanie on board, it was decided that one of her daughter’s long-time admirers, a man called Raymond Stock, should carry out the execution, since he was still besotted with the shapely, long-legged teenager.

  Stock had continually told Stephanie: ‘There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you,’ so now he was going to be put to the ultimate test.

  It should be pointed out here that Stock’s obsession with Stephanie was sweetened by the promise of $10,000 and part ownership of a house. As Stephanie snuggled up close to Stock on the settee at his home, she playfully stroked his thigh and said, ‘I promise we’ll be together afterwards and we’re gonna have the time of our lives.’

  Within hours the couple had stolen a car and switched its number plates, and were heading out towards Santa Barbara. Stephanie sat really close to Stock as they made the hour-long journey and talked in vivid detail about the plan to murder Phillip Bogdanoff: they’d go to the Bogdanoff mobile home, wait for Phillip to open the door and pump him full of bullets.

  But as they approached the outskirts of Santa Barbara, Stock began suffering from an attack of guilty conscience. The idea of blasting Phillip Bogdanoff to death seemed all wrong. His hands started shaking, even though Stephanie was snuggling close to him as they drove. She kissed and licked his ear, neck and cheeks to try and help him relax. But the same thought kept going through Stock’s mind: ‘I’ll go to hell if I do this.’

  Just outside Santa Barbara, Stock announced to Stephanie he was pulling out of the hit. She was surprisingly calm and they turned the car around and headed back to Bakersfield in complete silence. When Stock dropped her off at her home, she’d already decided she’d never see him again. She’d have to find some other stupid man to do what he was told.

  Just a few days later, Stephanie set out to persuade another of her admirers, Danny Kaplan, a neighbour from Bakersfield. He later recalled that there was something incredibly sexy about the teenager. When she nuzzled up to him and said she needed a favour, he couldn’t resist helping her. Even after she’d explained the task, Kaplan took a huge gulp and decided to do it. He was hooked.

  ‘I loved her so much I’d have done anything for her,’ Kaplan s
aid later. It was a familiar story. Stephanie had that sort of power over men. Kaplan didn’t even object when Stephanie said her regular boyfriend – 21-year-old Brian Stafford – would be accompanying them on their mission to kill Phillip Bogdanoff. Kaplan still believed he’d be her only true love in the end.

  A few days later, both men loaded shotguns and rifles into Kaplan’s car and headed off towards Santa Barbara. This time the plan was to blast Phillip Bogdanoff to death as he drove alongside them on the motorway on his way back home from work. So by the time Kaplan, Stafford and Stephanie had arrived at Bogdanoff’s workplace, all three were totally psyched up for the kill. They found a discreet vantage point overlooking the main entrance to the building and waited for Bogdanoff to come out.

  Many hours passed. Then darkness fell and the three accomplices began to realise that maybe he wasn’t at work that day. They got agitated and Kaplan started to question the entire plan for the first time.

  ‘Let’s call it a day. We’ll have to think up a different way to do this,’ he said nervously to the other two.

  But Stephanie had other ideas. As the two men dropped their mini-armoury of weapons back in the boot of the car, she suggested a different way to kill her ‘evil’ stepfather. But Kaplan didn’t want to know.

  ‘I’m not going through with it. I want out of this,’ he said.

  Stephanie and her boyfriend Brian Stafford were angered by Kaplan’s outburst.

  ‘Hey, come on. You promised. We all agreed.’

  Stephanie made it sound more like a playground dare than a mission to murder.

  ‘No way. I cannot murder an innocent man.’

  ‘But he’s not innocent. He’s beaten my mom. He deserves to die.’

  ‘You don’t know that for sure.’

  Stephanie failed to dissuade Kaplan. They’d have to go back to the drawing board yet again. But nothing would make Stephanie give up. She ignored all her fears out of a fierce loyalty for her ‘battered’ mother. She believed the right opportunity would come along eventually. And boyfriend Stafford remained as passionate about Stephanie as ever. He’d do anything for her.

  Just a few weeks later – on 21 September 1989 – Stephanie, Stafford and his great pal Ricky Rogers teamed up for what they hoped would be a third-time-lucky bid to murder Phillip Bogdanoff. This time the murder would be carried out on Bogdanoff’s favourite El Capitan Beach.

  That hot, sunny morning, the couple went on to the beach where they stripped off all their clothes and began topping up their all-over tans. El Capitan beach was very busy that day. The surf was crashing down forming huge slicks of bubbly froth on the sand as sun-worshippers lay completely naked on the strip of beach reserved exclusively for ‘nature lovers’.

  Diana and Phillip had settled in their favourite spot, just a few yards from the water’s edge. It was the perfect location for him to cast his eyes across the beautiful suntanned oiled bodies that lay nearby soaking up the sunshine. Diana was more fidgety than usual. But then she did have rather a lot on her mind that day.

  Instead of laying flat on her back as she normally did, Diana found herself sitting up with her knees close to her ample breasts as she watched the crowds from a distance. Watching. Waiting. Watching. Waiting. When Phillip looked across at Diana he noticed his wife’s behaviour, but it never crossed his mind she was actually on the lookout for two fully clothed bodies. And the more Diana Bogdanoff looked out for her accomplices, the more she found herself ogling the naked men wandering in her immediate vicinity. One naked sun-worshipper even tried to give her the come-on because she’d been gazing past his right shoulder at two men loitering near the beach wall. At last the two would-be killers were in her sights. Reassured, she lay on her back and relaxed with a relieved smile on her face. It was just after 11am and the countdown to the end of Phillip Bogdanoff’s life had begun.

  A few minutes later, the shadow of two men loomed over Phillip and Diana Bogdanoff.

  ‘Hey, man. You gotta joint?’

  Phillip Bogdanoff squinted up at them through the strong sunlight.

  ‘Excuse me? What did you say?’

  ‘I said. You got some grass, man?’

  Phillip was more a dry martini-type of character. Cannabis had never been on his menu.

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ he replied nervously.

  There was something about these two men he did not like. Diana didn’t move an inch.

  The two men then glanced at each other nervously. One of them pulled a pistol out from under his shirt and pointed it straight at Bogdanoff, who tried to get up off the sand. Then the gunman pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through Bogdanoff’s cheek, spinning him off balance. That first wound was neat but ineffective. Brian Stafford leaned even nearer to his victim and fired again. This time Phillip Bogdanoff’s head recoiled and he slumped back on to the sand. Limp. Naked. Bloody.

  Then Diana Bogdanoff screamed in terror as she looked down at her own breasts and realised her dead husband’s blood was splattered all over her naked body. The appalling reality of the murder sparked off plenty of real shock and emotion. She even felt bits of her husband’s grist and tissue lodged in her long blonde hair.

  Meanwhile gunman Stafford coolly and calmly put his pistol back inside his shirt and started running away from the couple with his accomplice. They heard Diana’s cries for help and looked around for a moment to see her kneeling naked and bloody over the corpse of her husband – the man she’d ordered them to kill.

  The secluded calm of that nudists’ paradise was soon cruelly interrupted by dozens of police, paramedics, coroners’ officers, press and onlookers desperate to get a glimpse of the naked guy blasted to bits on the beach in front of his wife. Just a few yards from where her husband had been killed sat the shaking figure of Diana Bogdanoff. Wearing a pullover covering her blood-spattered skin, the hysterical widow was being comforted by a tourist who just happened to be walking by moments after the shooting and had immediately offered her his jumper for cover.

  ‘They shot my husband. They shot my husband.’

  She just kept repeating the words over and over again. It was an impressive performance. No doubt she probably did feel a certain sense of bereavement and shock. Who wouldn’t? A tearful Diana told police about the two strangers who came up to her husband and ended his life just because he told them he didn’t smoke pot.

  ‘Phillip didn’t do anything,’ she weeped. ‘He didn’t say anything to make them angry. He was just sittin’ here.’

  Detectives were genuinely baffled and all said later how sorry they felt for that poor, grieving widow. ‘It was a senseless, cruel killing,’ said one cop on the TV news that night. The town of Santa Barbara was soon virtually under siege from the media, and local residents genuinely feared that the mystery killers might strike again at any time.

  But the only place Brian Stafford and his friend Ricky Rogers were heading was back to their homes in Bakersfield with the beautiful Stephanie snuggling between them on the bench seats of their old Chevy. Stephanie was delighted to have helped her poor, defenceless mother escape her nightmare marriage to a monster. And now she’d have a nice home to live in and a good income from his life insurance.

  Back in Bakersfield, the murdering threesome broke open a few beers and proposed a toast at Stephanie’s house.

  ‘To a job well done.’

  The beer bottles clinked and then Stephanie snapped on the TV to find a distressed Diana Bogdanoff pouring out her heart and soul to the news channels. The tragic widow shed numerous tears for the cameras, wrung her hands and gave a wonderfully convincing performance. The happy killers looked on and laughed. It had all gone even better than they’d expected.

  A few minutes later Ricky Rogers left the house. Stephanie climbed into bed with her athletic lover Brian Stafford and they made the same sort of hot, passionate love that her mother prided herself on achieving every time she slept with yet another young stud. Like mother, like daughter.

  Santa
Barbara detectives Russ Birchim and Fred Ray were seasoned homicide cops who’d investigated just about every type of murder over the years. But the cold-blooded slaying of Phillip Bogdanoff truly baffled them. As one of them later recalled: ‘No one gets killed over a joint. Certainly not on a nudist beach in broad daylight.’

  Birchim and Ray soon concluded that Bogdanoff’s grieving widow must have had something to do with it. But Diana Bogdanoff wasn’t about to throw up her entire life by confessing to a crime she knew they couldn’t pin on her, so she stuck rigidly to her story about the shooting of her loving husband. Even neighbours at the El Capitan Ranch Park had only good things to say about the Bogdanoffs: ‘Nice couple’; ‘Kept themselves to themselves’; ‘A sweet pair’.

  Detectives Birchim and Ray plugged away with composite sketches of the two killers based on eyewitness reports. Hundreds of likely-looking suspects were pulled in, interrogated and cleared over the following month. Birchim and Ray chewed over a few other possible theories. Maybe the two gunmen were a couple of screwballs high on dope. Perhaps it was all a case of mistaken identity. But whatever their suspicions about the case there was no hard and fast evidence to go on. The two cops were swimming around in the dark.

  Then an anonymous caller phoned into a police informants’ hotline in Bakersfield. The man said he had information about the nude beach murder in Santa Barbara. He said he’d met the two men who carried out the killing. ‘I thought they were joking,’ he told the police operator. ‘Then I saw the newspaper reports and realised they’d really done it.’ The tipster then named the people involved in the killing. The first name on his list was Raymond Stock, the man involved in the initial aborted attempt on the life of Phillip Bogdanoff.

  When detectives called at Stock’s home in Bakersfield he immediately confessed his involvement. The next one on the detectives’ ‘hit list’ was Danny Kaplan. He had a similar story to tell. But this time he furnished the police with the names of Stafford and his pal Ricky Rogers as well as alleged ringleader Stephanie, daughter of Diana Bogdanoff. Kaplan also told officers how Stafford, Rogers and Stephanie came back to her apartment after the actual killing, bragging about what they’d just done.