Eldon Mate Is Murdered

Eldon Mate’s murder is presented through a sequence of competing reconstructions rather than a conclusive account of the killer or the method. The theories connect the death to Mate’s estranged family, to the signature of a suspected serial killer, and to an alleged attempt by Richard Doss to hire Quentin Goad; meanwhile, an abandoned portrait makes the killing a public image as well as a crime.

Background and competing motives

Milo Sturgis considers whether Mate’s son, Donny Mate, could have returned to harm the father who had abandoned and rejected him. Milo speculates that Donny might have retained enough intelligence to plan a killing despite mental problems, and that Mate’s growing fame could have sharpened his resentment. In this reconstruction, a meeting in the Mulholland area might have been arranged because Mate did not want Donny in his apartment; the possibility that Mate backed his van in, either from guilt or from attraction to danger, remains conjecture rather than established fact.

That theory gives the murder a familial motive, but it does not resolve the circumstances of the meeting. It also leaves open the possibility that Mate agreed to see his son, a scenario in which the estrangement itself might have helped draw him into danger.

Competing reconstructions of the killing

Leimert Fusco offers a different, explicitly tentative reading. He thinks Mate may have been rendered partly or wholly unconscious, perhaps by a blow to the head from behind or by a choke hold. Because Mate was found in his van, the reported scene does not match Michael Burke’s characteristic practice of propping victims against trees. Fusco nevertheless sees a connection: the wooded location fits Burke’s known killings, and the more public disposal could indicate growing confidence.

Fusco also speculates that the killer might have lured Mate to a meeting by pretending to be interested in his work. He judges an appeal to Mate’s ego a plausible means of gaining his cooperation. This is a proposed explanation, not a confirmed account of how Mate was approached or killed; the precise method and the killer’s identity remain unsettled in the evidence presented here.

The portrait and the public case

The murder acquires a theatrical afterlife when a wrapped package is left beside the rear door of Primal Images, an art gallery on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica. Gallery owner Grant Kugler finds an unsigned oil painting described as a copy of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson. In this altered version, Mate appears in a double role, both dissector and cadaver.

A newspaper account links the portrait to the crime by reporting similarities between the painting and details of the scene. The article identifies the work as a surprise donation, quotes Kugler’s assessment that it was competent rather than masterful, and reports that police have taken it into custody. The image makes the murder resemble a deliberate message, but neither its maker nor the reason it was left at the gallery is established by the report.

The alleged contract and its limits

Milo relays Quentin Goad’s claim that Richard Doss offered him five thousand dollars to kill Mate. According to Goad, Doss approached him two months earlier while he was doing roofing and sheet-metal work at a shopping center in San Bernardino that Doss had bought cheaply and was refurbishing. Goad says the proposed payment was split into one thousand dollars in advance and four thousand after the killing, and that Doss wanted the murder made bloody enough to suggest a serial killer.

Goad also claims that he never intended to carry out the killing: he took the advance as a chance to con Doss and leave for Nevada, where he hoped to escape the pressure of having two strikes in California. His account surfaces after a separate robbery. A month earlier, he had robbed a hamburger restaurant in San Fernando with a .22; a security guard shot him in the leg, and he spent two weeks receiving treatment at County Gen before being transferred to Twin Towers. The gun was unloaded. These circumstances explain how Goad’s allegation enters the investigation, but they do not independently establish that Doss commissioned Mate’s murder or identify the person who killed him.