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A long and unresolved story well told:-
In 1982, a Family Disappeared From Their Valley Home—What Happened to the Salomons?
A writer and former neighbor is still trying to put the pieces together
By Stacy Perman
July 2, 2018
In 1982, a Family Disappeared From Their Valley Home—What Happened to the Salomons?
A writer and former neighbor is still trying to put the pieces together
By Stacy Perman
July 2, 2018
We found the front door locked and the house dark. Not even the front porch light flickered that warm evening when my mom and I walked five doors over to the home of the Salomons. Another neighbor, who lived behind them in our honeycomb of cul-de-sacs in Northridge, had called us to say that the Salomons’ pool had overflowed and was flooding her yard. Since she didn’t know the family, she hoped we could help. So we phoned them, and when nobody answered, my mom and I headed over.
It was Wednesday, October 13, 1982, and Lassen, our little street, was quiet as usual. We rang the buzzer, then rapped on the door. Silence. Sol Salomon’s burgundy Rolls-Royce preened like a peacock in the driveway; his beat-up white Dodge van, emblazoned with Apollo Fire Extinguishers, hugged the curb. The family’s cocker spaniel, Mishmish, barely stirred as we walked into the backyard, which was soaked. It was a puzzling scene.
With no sign of the Salomons, we went home, and my mom made quick work of her phone book. Elaine Salomon’s cousin Dorene Laffer said she’d swung by their home to drop of some borrowed chairs and was surprised to find nobody there. The two women were like sisters, talking several times a day, but for more than 24 hours, she’d not heard a word. In fact, nobody had. What’s more, Elaine never showed up at the clinic where she worked as a volunteer counselor. Neither of the children—14-year-old Michelle or 9-year-old Mitchell—had been at school.
Though I went to a different school, Michelle and I were always in each other’s pockets. I’d seen her the day before and had planned on spending that evening at a “pants party”—a Tupperware party for clothing—with Michelle, her mother, and her grandmother, Margaret Malarowitz. It would go late, and I’d end up sleeping over. For some unfathomable reason, I had begged off. But Margaret (or Marge to everyone who knew her) hadn’t heard from Elaine either since spending the previous evening with them. As for Sol, the last anyone could remember, he attended a car auction with a business associate the night before.
The next phone call my mother made was to the police.
Within minutes a pair of uniformed officers from the LAPD’s Devonshire Division pulled up to the Salomons’ ranch house, and Marty Laffer, Dorene’s husband, got there soon after. He’d recently resigned as an investigator with the IRS’s criminal division and was unconvinced when, after a cursory look, the officers said they’d found nothing unusual. He urged them to check inside the house. “When [Elaine] goes to the bathroom all her friends and relatives know,” he told them. “There’s two kids involved, and it doesn’t make sense that they would lock up the house and be gone without telling anybody.”
After a patrol sergeant arrived with permission to enter, Marty showed them how to get inside through a bathroom window in the back. The police went in first, followed by Marty and then my mom and me. The doors were locked, but the burglar alarm hadn’t been activated. Marty phoned Dorene from the master bedroom. Everything looked fine, he said, surveying the room; even the bed was made. That’s when Dorene panicked. “Elaine never made the beds,” she told me later. “Something was wrong.”
By midnight, after my mom and I had left, the house was crawling with a dozen cops. On closer inspection, the detectives found that Michelle’s bed had been broken and that her pillowcases, sheets, and bedspread were gone. They also discovered blood droplets on her bedroom wall and mattress. A small patch of carpet had been cut out as well. In 1982 DNA analysis was largely unavailable, but the evidence suggested foul play to the police, who had nonetheless deemed it a missing persons case.
Continued at length:
http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/salomon-unsolved-murder/
It was Wednesday, October 13, 1982, and Lassen, our little street, was quiet as usual. We rang the buzzer, then rapped on the door. Silence. Sol Salomon’s burgundy Rolls-Royce preened like a peacock in the driveway; his beat-up white Dodge van, emblazoned with Apollo Fire Extinguishers, hugged the curb. The family’s cocker spaniel, Mishmish, barely stirred as we walked into the backyard, which was soaked. It was a puzzling scene.
With no sign of the Salomons, we went home, and my mom made quick work of her phone book. Elaine Salomon’s cousin Dorene Laffer said she’d swung by their home to drop of some borrowed chairs and was surprised to find nobody there. The two women were like sisters, talking several times a day, but for more than 24 hours, she’d not heard a word. In fact, nobody had. What’s more, Elaine never showed up at the clinic where she worked as a volunteer counselor. Neither of the children—14-year-old Michelle or 9-year-old Mitchell—had been at school.
Though I went to a different school, Michelle and I were always in each other’s pockets. I’d seen her the day before and had planned on spending that evening at a “pants party”—a Tupperware party for clothing—with Michelle, her mother, and her grandmother, Margaret Malarowitz. It would go late, and I’d end up sleeping over. For some unfathomable reason, I had begged off. But Margaret (or Marge to everyone who knew her) hadn’t heard from Elaine either since spending the previous evening with them. As for Sol, the last anyone could remember, he attended a car auction with a business associate the night before.
The next phone call my mother made was to the police.
Within minutes a pair of uniformed officers from the LAPD’s Devonshire Division pulled up to the Salomons’ ranch house, and Marty Laffer, Dorene’s husband, got there soon after. He’d recently resigned as an investigator with the IRS’s criminal division and was unconvinced when, after a cursory look, the officers said they’d found nothing unusual. He urged them to check inside the house. “When [Elaine] goes to the bathroom all her friends and relatives know,” he told them. “There’s two kids involved, and it doesn’t make sense that they would lock up the house and be gone without telling anybody.”
After a patrol sergeant arrived with permission to enter, Marty showed them how to get inside through a bathroom window in the back. The police went in first, followed by Marty and then my mom and me. The doors were locked, but the burglar alarm hadn’t been activated. Marty phoned Dorene from the master bedroom. Everything looked fine, he said, surveying the room; even the bed was made. That’s when Dorene panicked. “Elaine never made the beds,” she told me later. “Something was wrong.”
By midnight, after my mom and I had left, the house was crawling with a dozen cops. On closer inspection, the detectives found that Michelle’s bed had been broken and that her pillowcases, sheets, and bedspread were gone. They also discovered blood droplets on her bedroom wall and mattress. A small patch of carpet had been cut out as well. In 1982 DNA analysis was largely unavailable, but the evidence suggested foul play to the police, who had nonetheless deemed it a missing persons case.
Continued at length:
http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/salomon-unsolved-murder/