LA junkie charged with killing ‘American Idol' boss Robin Kaye and her husband allegedly used couple's gun in double murder
Raymond Boodarian, 22, allegedly broke into the couple's $4.5 million Encino mansion on July 10 and found their firearm as he rummaged about, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said during a public meeting at the neighborhood's community center Monday.
When the couple, who are both 70, came home from grocery shopping and walked in on the burglary, Boodarian allegedly turned their own gun on them and fired.
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3 Robin Kaye and her husband Thomas Deluca, both 70, were shot to death at home on July 10.
'It was Robyn and Tom's gun,' Hochman said at the meeting, which was attended by more than 100 concerned residents, NBC News reported. 'It wasn't his gun. It was exceptionally tragic.'
Boodarian then called police with his own cell phone after the killing and gave his name, which Hochman said ultimately led to police tracking him down and arresting him a day after the bodies were found.
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'Mr. Boodarian got caught because he used his cell phone to contact police concerning the situation, actually identified himself by name,' Hochman said. 'Police were able to ping the cell phone, find out where he lived, go to his residence and arrest him.'
But it remains unclear when Boodarian made that call to police, or exactly what he said in it.
3 Raymond Boodarian, 22, was arrested at his home two days after the 70-year-old couple's bodies were found.
TMZ
Officers responded to Kaye and Deluca's home on the day of the killing after neighbors reported seeing somebody jump the fence. But nothing was apparently wrong as they looked into the property from the street, so they left.
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It wasn't until four days later when they returned to the home for a welfare check that they found the bodies — with a trail of blood winding to the home's front door, and a back door smashed open.
Inside, Kaye was found dead in the pantry and Deluca in a bathroom, according to PEOPLE.
Boodarian was arrested the next day at his own home, located about 15 minutes away from the crime scene.
3 The $4.5 million mansion where Kaye and Deluca were murdered is 15 minutes from Boodarian's home.
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And the arrest wasn't his first for violent behavior.
He was arrested three times between November 2023 and June 2024 for allegations of battery and threatening family members with a knife.
But all the charges were dropped over mental incompetency after he served just six months in custody, and he was turned loose.
His neighbors also told The Post that he was a nuisance on their street, and that he regularly wandered about high on drugs and menacing residents.
Encino locals expressed alarm that he'd been freed after such a record of arrests — especially since their neighborhood has been plagued by an uptick in crime in recent years.
'We're having phenomenal numbers on crime reduction,' LAPD Deputy Chief Marla Ciuffetelli said, according to ABC7 Los Angeles. 'That being said, when two wonderful people end up dead in their own home, those crime statistics fall kind of flat.'
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New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Families try to clawback money from NYPD officers' killers
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New York Post
8 hours ago
- New York Post
Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance remains among America's most infamous, unsolved mysteries — but there's a new theory
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It was the last time anyone ever heard from him. 9 It's been 50 years since Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive, but his disappearance remains one of the most infamous, unsolved mysteries in American history. Bettmann Archive He was officially declared dead seven years later, but the whereabouts of his remains have baffled the FBI ever since. Advertisement Over the past five decades, the agency has assigned hundreds of agents to the case who've debunked conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory – while costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, estimated Hoffa historian and author Scott Burnstein. 9 Police in 2012 block a driveway in Roseville, Mich., so authorities could drill into a cement driveway and search for Hoffa — only to come up empty. AP 9 FBI agents in 2006 sifting through a mound of dirt on the site of a demolished barn in Milford Township, Mich., while searching for Hoffa's remains. ASSOCIATED PRESS The case also spawned more than 20 books, multiple movies and documentaries – and a cottage industry of investigative journalists, amateur sleuths and former wise guys claiming to know what really happened. Advertisement Just this week a new theory emerged — that Hoffa's corpse was literally turned into mincemeat, The Post can reveal. Burnstein — who believes the hit on Hoffa was carried out by Detroit's Tocco–Zerilli crime family — said the case's mythology took on a life of its own because remains were never found. 'This was something they thought was a perfect crime – and in a lot of ways it was the perfect crime,' he told The Post, referring to the crime syndicate also known as 'Detroit Partnership.' 'I just don't think they anticipated people would still be talking about it 50 years later, and this is a mob family that thrives in the shadows. They like being stealth. 9 Hoffa left his cottage home in suburban Lake Orion, Mich., near Detroit on July 30, 1975 for a 2 p.m. meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant (shown) in nearby Bloomfield Hills. He called his wife, Josephine, from the restaurant's parking lot at 2:15 p.m. to tell her no one showed up. It was the last time anyone ever heard from him. Bettmann Archive Advertisement 'They're not a New York-type family or Chicago-type family or Philadelphia-type family that really covets the press.' On Wednesday, Burnstein teamed up with former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino and ex-mob soldier Nove Tocco at an event at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich., to reveal the latest theory to surface about what happened to Hoffa. They claimed Hoffa was whacked by late Detroit mobster Anthony 'Tony Pal' Palazzolo — and the body ground up in a sausage grinder at the former Detroit Sausage Company Palazzolo used for his operations. 9 Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, a New Jersey-based capo for the Genovese crime family, was one of the reputed mobsters Hoffa was supposed to meet with the day he went missing. ASSOCIATED PRESS The remaining pieces were then dumped in an incinerator of a mob-owned waste disposal business in nearby Hamtramck, Mich., that was destroyed in an arson fire eight months later, the trio claimed. The site is now part of a local jail complex. Other popular theories about Hoffa's demise include: He was whacked on Provenzano's orders, and his body was chopped into little pieces, taken to South Florida and thrown into the Everglades. The FBI never found evidence to support the claim. Hoffa was buried during construction of the old Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. — which is now part of MetLife Stadium's parking lot. The FBI dismissed the claim that Hoffa was buried under what would become Section 107 of the old stadium — made by mob hitman-turned-informant Donald 'Tony the Greek' Frankos during a 1989 Playboy magazine interview. The agency didn't even bother to check it out when the stadium was demolished in 2010. Hoffa's pal Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran claimed on his deathbed in 2003 that he lured Hoffa to a house in Detroit and shot him twice in the back of the head on mobsters' orders. Key parts of the tale spurred the 2019 hit flick 'The Irishman.' Local police ripped up floorboards at the same house in 2004, and the FBI later determined that blood found on them wasn't Hoffa's. He was buried at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich. In 2006, the FBI searched the site, once owned by a Teamster official, after a 75-year-old inmate claimed he remembered seeing men using a backhoe to dig a hole there a day after Hoffa disappeared. The FBI brought cadaver dogs and fully demolished the barn – but found zilch. The failed search cost the agency $265,000, including $160,000 to replace the razed barn. Hoffa was abducted by federal marshals and agents and dropped out of an airplane into one of the Great Lakes surrounding Michigan, according to former Hoffa associate Joseph Franco who wrote a book about it. Authorities found Franco's book and claims to be fiction, not fact. He was buried beneath a swimming pool in Hampton Township, Mich. The 2003 tip came from convicted murderer Richard Powell, who told cops Hoffa was buried beneath his former property. Police demolished the pool to dig beneath it, but found no trace of Hoffa. Hoffa's driver Marvin Elkind claimed in the 2011 book 'The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob' that Hoffa's killers buried him beneath the 73-story Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, which is General Motors' headquarters. The claim was rejected by authorities. A group of cold case crime investigators claimed in 2023 they believed Hoffa was buried on the site of the Brewers' old ballpark, Milwaukee County Stadium in Wisconsin. 9 Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran claimed on his deathbed in 2003 that he lured Hoffa to a house in Detroit and shot him twice in the back of the head on mobsters' orders. Key parts of the tale spurred the 2019 hit flick 'The Irishman.' ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement Dan Moldea, a 75-year-old journalist and author of 'The Hoffa Wars' who has written extensively about the case since the ex-Teamster boss went missing, spurred one of the most recent searches for Hoffa in 2021 by providing the feds information he secured from multiple mob sources. Moldea told the FBI he believed Hoffa was buried in a steel drum in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, near the site of a former Jersey City landfill. Before the FBI began its search, Moldea and Fox News contracted teams of investigators to use ground-penetrating radar to check for anomalies under the site, such as steel drums. Both tests flagged possible evidence, he said. 9 Investigative journalist Dan Moldea told the FBI his sources said Hoffa was buried in a steel drum in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, near the site of a former Jersey City landfill. The FBI conducted a search but Moldea believes they dug in the wrong location. AP Advertisement The scans were then provided to the FBI's Detroit Field Office, but Moldea said that office never shared the information with the FBI's Newark Field Office — and he believes this led to the feds digging in the wrong spot a mere 10 yards away and coming up empty. 'We spoon-fed them this information, so it was tragic the way the whole thing worked out,' Moldea told The Post. He wants to re-examine the suspected burial site, which is now owned by the New Jersey Department of Transportation, but said he's been blocked because the agency claims the area is currently an active work zone for overhead construction on the highway. Burnstein said he has great respect for Moldea's work but believes the murder and body disposal was done locally — not out of state. Advertisement 9 One of the most infamous theories about Hoffa's remains is that they were buried during the construction of the former Giants Stadium under what would become Section 107 by in the field's western end zone. AP 'I think people are making this way more complex than it actually was,' Bernstein said. 'This was a job done by the Detroit mob, and it was probably done within a half hour or 45 minutes.' Besides Hoffa's bid to reclaim the Teamsters' presidency — a title he held from 1959 to 1971 — Burnstein said his sources told him there's another reason mobsters wanted Hoffa dead: He was a 'confidential informant working for the FBI.' 'The rumors were starting to spread on the street in the spring of 75,' he said. Advertisement The FBI said the case remains active but declined to answer questions. 'As the 50th anniversary of Mr. Hoffa's disappearance approaches, the FBI Detroit Field Office remains steadfast in its commitment to pursuing all credible leads,' said Cheyvoryea Gibson, the office's Special Agent in Charge. 'We continue to encourage anyone with information to submit a tip at or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.' 9 Hoffa poses shortly before his appearance on the TV program 'Face the Nation,' on July 26, 1959, in Washington DC. ASSOCIATED PRESS James P. Hoffa, son of the late Teamsters boss, told the Detroit News he doesn't buy that his father's remains were taken out of state, and he denied that his father planned to testify for the feds. He's proud of the 'legacy' his father left behind, but regrets the disappearance became comedy fodder for late-night television and that his mother died in 1980 with a 'broken heart.' 'My father went to a meeting he shouldn't have gone to, and he was murdered,' said the younger Hoffa, 84, who served as Teamsters president from 1998-2022. 'I know there are a lot of theories out there, but we've stopped trying to figure out who did what to whom. 'This is a tragedy our family has had to live with, and we're still hoping to have closure someday.'
NBC News
10 hours ago
- NBC News
Hackers leak 13,000 user photos and IDs from the Tea app, designed as a women's safe space
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