L.A. Suspect Guilty of Vegas Murders

A Los Angeles man charged in the so-called 1985 Brentwood “Ninja” murders has been convicted in Las Vegas of killing three people at the home of a Las Vegas socialite. Steven Homick, 48, a one-time policeman who allegedly headed a murder-for-hire ring, showed no emotion when the jury, after two days of deliberation, returned its verdicts. As he was led from the courtroom, Homick said only, “My head and my heart are clear.”

Homick was convicted in the December, 1985, slayings of socialite Bobbie Jean Tipton, her maid, Marie Bullock, and James Myers, a deliveryman who stumbled upon the crime. The slayings, authorities said, occurred when Homick went to Tipton’s southeast Las Vegas home to rob her of $1 million in jewelry he thought she had there.

Prosecutors had no physical evidence linking Homick to the crime scene, but testimony from several dozen witnesses tied him to jewelry taken from the Tipton home. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty when the jury returns for the penalty phase of the trial.

Homick, who served as a Los Angeles police officer for 14 months in 1964 and 1965, has also been charged in the “Ninja” contract slayings of a Brentwood couple in September, 1985, and with being the leader of a ring that killed an elderly Las Vegas man the same year.