Informant's Claim of Liaison With Sergeant Is Probed : Law enforcement: Policeman, removed from homicide task force, allegedly had sexual relationship with informant in prostitute-deaths investigation.

By MARK PLATTE

Dec. 6, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Sgt. Harold E. Goudarzi, removed from the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force in October after allegations surfaced that he was having a sexual relationship with a task force informant, is under an internal affairs investigation by the San Diego Police Department that could lead to his firing.

Goudarzi, 43, has been with the department 21 years and was an original member of the task force, which is probing the mysterious deaths since 1985 of 43 prostitutes and transients. The investigation recently was broadened to include speculation that police may have been involved in some of murders.

Goudarzi was transferred to the missing persons bureau after police informant Denise Loche, 36, of Mira Mesa, told task force investigators that she had a four-month romantic relationship with Goudarzi, beginning in mid-June.

A source close to the task force told The Times Wednesday that Goudarzi had initially been under an internal task force investigation and was personally removed from the group by Assistant Chief Norm Stamper after Loche’s allegations surfaced.

Loche confirmed this week that Goudarzi told her that Stamper questioned him about the relationship this fall, but that Goudarzi denied it. Goudarzi could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and Stamper refused to discuss the task force investigation.

Internal affairs is now investigating a series of allegations against Goudarzi, including Loche’s assertions that Goudarzi drugged her at his apartment Oct. 13 and that he had her secretly tape-record a conversation with a newspaper reporter.

Loche has also alleged that Goudarzi paid her $200 to be a confidential informant, which was never cleared with his supervisors, the source said.

As in all its investigations, internal affairs will determine whether the allegations are true and, if so, whether Goudarzi’s actions were intentional or done mistakenly. If intentional, Goudarzi could be fired.

“If what’s being alleged is true, it’s devastating,” the source said. “This is not the first time that task force has been subjected to this kind of publicity. It’s really painful. But, on a professional level, the (rest of the) task force is doing what it is supposed to do.”

Goudarzi recruited Loche on June 15, she said, to try and discover who may have been leaking task force or grand jury information to various people, including a private investigator and a reporter for the San Diego Tribune. In particular, Loche said, Goudarzi was searching for an internal task force file with information on Donna Gentile.

Gentile, a prostitute and police informant, was found slain in 1985 in East County. She had gravel stuffed in her mouth, a sign that some interpreted as meaning that she may have been killed for testifying against police officers during a Civil Service hearing and causing two of them to be disciplined.

In an interview this week, Loche said she secretly recorded only the newspaper reporter and refused directions to record two others, one of whom was the private investigator. She said Goudarzi sat inside a police vehicle outside a restaurant with an electrician who helped set up the recording and listened to the conversation.

The source said a law enforcement agency would tape-record a reporter only if he were suspected of participating in criminal behavior.

“This certainly wouldn’t be a normal thing” for law enforcement investigators to do, the source said. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of that happening.”

Goudarzi did not tell anyone about Loche, contrary to task force and police procedures that at least two investigators work with each informant, the source said.

“The policy is there for a reason,” the source said. “The use of confidential informants is a sensitive proposition in any field but particularly in homicide or any field of criminal investigation. Goudarzi was out there acting on his own.”

Law enforcement administrators asked task force member Jim Reynolds, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, to join Goudarzi in working with Loche.

Loche said Reynolds told her that the tape-recordings were authorized. She asked for--but was refused--written confirmation that the recordings were sanctioned. Reynolds did not return a telephone call Wednesday.

The new allegations raise continuing questions about the ability of the task force to monitor itself and the manner in which it uses confidential informants to conduct such a sensitive investigation.

“There is a very clear policy on the development and continuing contact with confidential informants,” the source said. “In effect, an informant can be developed through any means. The issue is, once they become CIs (confidential informants), what kind of controls should be in place?”

The task force has an investigative fund to pay informants that is audited, and any payments made out of the fund must be approved and logged. Nothing was recorded for payment to Loche, the source said.

Goudarzi was one of the original nine investigators assigned to the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, which at the time consisted of representatives of the San Diego Police Department, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office. Since then, 12 investigators have been added, including members of the state attorney general’s office.

The task force has been split into three teams: one to investigate Gentile’s death, one in charge of the other murders, and a third to probe possible police corruption in connection with the prostitutes because of the way Gentile was found murdered.

At least five police officers and one former officer are under scrutiny for their possible connections to Gentile and missing prostitute Cynthia Maine, who disappeared in February, 1986 after detailing for internal-affairs investigators which officers were involved with prostitutes.