South Pasadena is a slice of the Midwest stuck incongruously between Los Angeles and Pasadena, with slanted roofs and big front porches and squads of kids cutting across lawns. Movie makers use the town to evoke Springfield, Ill., or Hannibal, Mo., lining up their shots so that you can't see the San Gabriel Mountains looming to the north or the palm trees poking above the big, shady camphor trees.
It's a quaint remnant of small-town America, population 24,000. Downtown is a little eccentric and on the bland side, with hardly a franchise outlet in sight. There's a big, cluttered hardware store and a drugstore with a soda counter out of the Archie comic books. And down the street at the Rialto Theatre, a huge velvet curtain still swoops out of the wings to cover the screen after the movie is over.
Sure, there's a new neon-lit strip mall on Fair Oaks Avenue that a lot of people call "that monstrosity." And sometimes teen-agers play their stereos too loud, and the thump thump thump gets the neighbors riled up. But, for the most part, folks want to preserve the town wholesale. In fact, South Pasadena's primary collective preoccupation for the past 30 years has been to keep Caltrans from rolling an eight-lane freeway link through the middle of town.
This is Norman Rockwell country, people say, just eight miles from downtown Los Angeles. Last year, it produced one of Southern California's grisliest, most perplexing multiple murders.
Six teen-agers--three girls, three boys--had gotten together on a March evening, partying at 18-year-old Kathy Macaulay's garage apartment in a palmy hillside neighborhood of Pasadena. In a scene that jolted hardened homicide detectives, the girls, all former or current South Pasadena High School students, were found shot to death--"beheaded by shotgun blast," as one judge put it.
Police found Macaulay slumped against the stereo. Danae Palermo, 17, was stretched face down across a queen-size bed, and Heather Goodwin, 18, was sprawled half on the bed and half off. The scene was "beyond imagination," says Pasadena homicide detective Michael Korpal, a 14-year police veteran, "the worst I've ever encountered."
Within 24 hours, two of the boys who had been at the gathering were tracked down in Oregon and charged with first-degree murder. The murder trial of David Adkins, 17, and Vinny Hebrock, 18, both of South Pasadena, is scheduled to start in Pasadena Superior Court on June 15. Both have pleaded not guilty. Cayle Fielder, 17, the third boy who was there that night, was not charged and has become the prime witness for the prosecution. The defense attorneys will no doubt challenge Fielder's story; one has said he plans to implicate Fielder in the crimes.
A full year later, few of the principals will talk openly about the murders. The parents of the victims and the defendants won't talk to reporters, and they have directed acquaintances to do the same. Many of those who consented to speak wish to remain anonymous.
Even though residents may not want to discuss them, the senseless murders have sounded an ugly wake-up call for adults in South Pasadena. The teen-agers at Kathy Macaulay's party that night, especially the accused murderers, may not fit the town's image of itself, but they were all products of South Pasadena. "There's a lot of kids like those kids," says one teacher who knew most of them. Nowadays, parents say, when their children try to slip out of the house or when they get a distant, musing look, something lurches inside. "I ask a lot more questions now," says the father of a teen-age girl.
SINCE THE MURDERS, THE SIX TEEN-AGERS WHO WERE INVOLVED HAVE BEEN REferred to as a "clique." But they were a loose assemblage, held together by little more than their dislike of South Pasadena High School and the "snobs" who excelled there. All six had become part of the minuscule 1% of students who drop out of the school, except Kathy Macaulay, who, at the time of her death, had been ditching class for three weeks. These weren't "mainstream" students, teachers say. "Frankly, most students probably didn't know who they were," one school official says.
South Pas High churns out college prospects like some marvelous inspirational machine. About 85% of the school's graduating seniors march off to college every year. When classes are in session on the rambling, collegiate-style campus, barely a peep is heard from the classrooms, and the central walkway, which angles past banana and eucalyptus trees, is empty. "We have some rules and regulations about being in class," says Principal Ben Ramirez. "We also have a quality teaching staff, and, frankly, most students don't want to miss out."
But like all Southern California high schools, South Pas has its cutups and its drug problems. "People like to make it seem like South Pas is just 'Leave It To Beaver,' " says one senior there. "Then you go to the parties and see all the people loaded."
