Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton has asked state parole officials to disregard claims they received from the lead detective in a controversial 1985 murder conviction now under review in federal court.
Bratton's request represents yet another setback for authorities in the case of Bruce Lisker, who has spent years denying that he murdered his mother, Dorka, in the family's Sherman Oaks home March 10, 1983.
Authorities described Lisker during his trial as a troubled teenager who beat and stabbed his mother after she caught him stealing $150 from her purse.
Today, much of the case against Lisker has been discredited by new or previously overlooked evidence. Lisker, 40, stands by the story he told police at the scene of the crime: that he came home, found his mother's bloody body and immediately called paramedics for help.
At trial, Lt. Andrew Monsue said police were unable to locate the money Lisker allegedly stole from the purse. Thirteen years later, in a letter to state parole officials, the detective said the missing money had been found by subsequent owners of the Lisker home, stashed in an attic above Bruce's former bedroom.
Monsue made the claim in opposing parole for Lisker, writing that the discovery "confirmed our initial theory" and demonstrated that Lisker was a killer who "should never be released to prey on anyone else in the future."
When Lisker learned about the Monsue letter, he hired a private investigator to check out Monsue's claim and discovered that the new homeowner said neither he nor his wife had found any money. He also said they had never contacted Monsue.
The Times, as part of a seven-month investigation into the case, found a court document in the county's archives earlier this year showing that -- unknown to the prosecutor and Lisker's defense team -- $120 had been in her purse all along, tucked inside a side pocket of her wallet. The money was found by a court clerk who wrote an inventory of all of the evidence in the case after the trial.
Following The Times' story, Bratton wrote his own letter to parole officials, disavowing Monsue's claim.
"It is requested that you remove [Monsue's] letter from your file and from any consideration in any evaluation of Mr. Lisker's eligibility for parole," Bratton wrote. "The Los Angeles Police Department cannot guarantee the veracity of the facts represented in the letter. Additionally, Detective Monsue submitted this letter without Department approval and without following the appropriate procedures to obtain the necessary approval."
