Husband Tells of Wife's Roadside Slaying

By SCOTT GLOVER and GEOFF BOUCHER

Jan. 20, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

ANAHEIM — Elizabeth Begaren looked through the window at the carload of men who had been following her family down the Riverside Freeway and made a split-second decision.

“If we stay in the car, we’ll all die,” Begaren said, according to a firsthand account by her husband.

With that, the 40-year-old state corrections officer pushed open the passenger door of her family’s blue Kia Sportage and made a run for it late Saturday, Nuzzi Begaren said in a telephone interview Monday.

She’d run only a few steps when two of the men caught up with her. In a final plea, she pulled out her state Department of Corrections badge and identified herself as a law enforcement officer.

“When they saw the badge, they shot her,” said Nuzzi Begaren. “She was dying, lying down in the blood, with the badge in her hand.”

In his first public statements since his wife’s roadside slaying late Saturday, Nuzzi Begaren said he believes Elizabeth Begaren was killed for the $4,800 she was carrying in her purse.

Police first believed the killing was a case of road rage but now say it might not have been a random act. They have questioned Nuzzi Begaren twice and say they plan to interview him a third time.

“We can’t say right now that this is a case of road rage,” Anaheim Police Lt. Joe Reiss said. “We don’t know what the motivation was, and at this point we’re absolutely looking at every angle.”

Begaren said he is “90% sure” the family was targeted by the assailants during a Saturday evening shopping trip to Macy’s in Burbank.

“There was no reason for someone to follow us,” he said. “We have no enemies.”

Begaren said he told Anaheim police his wife had been robbed of the money, and gave detectives the license number of the attackers’ vehicle, a dark blue late-1970s Oldsmobile. There were four men in the car, he said, two African Americans and two white or Latino men.

But Begaren said the Anaheim police detective in charge of the investigation was not interested.

“He doesn’t care what I’m going through,” said the unemployed Romanian-born restaurateur. “All he wants to do is interview my little girl.”

His daughter, Angelica, a 10-year-old from a previous marriage, heard the shots that killed her stepmother while he shielded her from harm, Begaren said.

Police say they have widened their inquiry to look for clues in the victim’s personal and professional life. Detectives, at work since Saturday’s 11:15 p.m. shooting, have been talking with prison and parole officials for any insights into the killing, police said.

Reiss declined to respond to comments by Begaren but said investigators have more questions for him. “We plan to continually talk to him about all this,” Reiss said. “We’ll be interviewing him again.”

Begaren said he, his wife and Angelica had left the Macy’s department store, which closes at 9 p.m. on Saturdays, after they could not find what they were looking for. Begaren wanted to buy an expensive crystal vase; his wife was shopping for clothes to wear on a family trip to Europe, he said.

They left the store with the idea they might stop at another mall, or maybe visit a friend in Buena Park, Begaren said.

But after they stopped for Chinese food and gas, Begaren said, he called to make hotel reservations at the Las Vegas Hilton for the night, a spur-of-the-moment suggestion by his wife.

While they were heading south on the Golden State Freeway, Angelica noticed that a car had been following them, Begaren said.

“She said, ‘Daddy, that’s the same car I saw before’ ” in Burbank, Begaren said.

Suspicious, Begaren said he began to weave in and out of traffic, but the blue Oldsmobile stayed close behind. Later, he drove off the Riverside Freeway, but the car continued to follow.

At one point, he said, he blinked his emergency flasher lights at a nearby police car, but the officers ignored him.

After exiting the Riverside Freeway at East Street, he tried to return to the freeway, but “they cut me off,” Begaren said.

“One of the guys was hanging from the window with a gun,” he said. “My wife said, ‘If we stay in the car, we’ll all die.’ ”

After she ran, his daughter got out and ran too, Begaren said. He chased after the child and pulled her away from one assailant.

“She yelled my name,” Begaren said. “Papi, Papi.”

He said he was hiding behind the car, covering his daughter, when the gunman opened fire.

Angelica is in shock, he said. “My little girl is destroyed for life.”

Begaren said that he had known his wife for eight years, but they married only six months ago.

He described Elizabeth as “full of joy, sensitive . . . a wonderful person.”

He added: “We have our ups and downs like everybody else, but if I got mad she’d have me laughing again in the next five minutes. I tried to do everything to make my wife and little girl happy.”

At California State Prison-Los Angeles County in Lancaster, flags hung at half-staff.

Some of her co-workers huddled together and met with counselors after hearing the news, prison spokeswoman Diane Gonzales said.

Begaren, a corrections officer since 1989, was assigned for the past 18 months to the Investigative Services Unit, Gonzales said.

The 10-member squad investigates inmate crimes in the prison.

The spokeswoman said there was nothing in Elizabeth Begaren’s work history to suggest that her killing might be related to her job.