For two months, detectives had little to go on until they questioned a car burglar who was arrested for stealing stereos from nearby parking garages. He told them he had witnessed the assault. Looking through LAPD arrest photos, he identified two transients as the attackers.
Police went searching for the suspects and found one of them, Timothy Gantt, on skid row.
Once married with a family and home in West Covina and a job repairing photocopiers, Gantt had lost everything to a craving for alcohol and cocaine. His criminal record included convictions for burglary and car theft, but he had never been to prison.
Detectives took Gantt to a nearby police station, where he was searched.
In his front pants pocket was the matchbook. Inside the flap, detectives noticed a handwritten phone number.
Gantt, insisting that he had nothing to do with the killing, said he had been given the matchbook while hustling. He told police he bought stolen calling card numbers and used them for immigrants who went to the area to make cheap international calls home. A customer used the matchbook to write down a telephone number he wanted Gantt to call for him, he said.
"I sell numbers," he told police, "but I don't steal or rob, and I've never hurt anyone."
Police were unconvinced. Detectives showed a second witness photo lineups that included Gantt and Michael Smith, the second transient identified earlier by the car burglar. The witness identified them as two men he had seen in the parking structure on the morning of the killing.
Police collected a sample of the victim's university assignments to compare with the phone number on the matchbook. An LAPD handwriting expert declared the results "inconclusive" but noted strong similarities.
Nearly a year to the day after Vardhan died, Gantt and Smith were charged with murder.
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At the trial, the matchbook was used to bolster the testimony of the prosecution's two key witnesses.
Kevin Shorts, an accountant, testified that he was driving on the sixth floor of the garage the morning of the murder when a car blocked his path. He said he saw Smith standing beside the car talking to the driver.
Shorts testified that he saw the driver's face for two seconds when the man glanced into his rear-view mirror before taking off. In court, he identified Gantt as the driver. "I have a very good memory with faces," Shorts said.
