Quentin Goad Commits a Robbery and Is Arrested

Quentin Goad’s attempted robbery was the immediate cause of his arrest and later became leverage in the investigation of Eldon Mate’s murder: facing a third strike, he offered police an account that implicated Richard Doss in hiring him to kill Mate.

Robbery and Arrest

A month before the investigation reached this point, Goad entered a San Fernando hamburger restaurant late at night, shortly before closing, carrying a paper bag and a .22. He had already forced the counter boy to lie facedown and put the money in the bag when a security guard suddenly appeared and brought him down. The haul was about eight hundred dollars; the gun was unloaded. The guard shot Goad in the leg, causing a flesh wound. After two weeks receiving medical care at County General, Goad was transferred to the Twin Towers jail.

The Alleged Murder Solicitation

Goad also worked in construction, including roofing and sheet-metal work, and had done jobs for Richard Doss. According to the account he later gave police, he was roofing a shopping-center project in San Bernardino two months earlier when Doss allegedly offered him five thousand dollars to kill Eldon Mate. Doss had bought the property cheaply and was refurbishing it. The requested killing was to be bloody enough to suggest the work of a serial killer.

Goad said Doss gave him one thousand dollars in advance and promised another four thousand when the job was done. He claimed he never planned to carry out the murder: instead, he intended to take the advance and leave town. He had been considering a move to Nevada because, with two strikes already against him in California, he feared the consequences of another offense. Police also learned that Doss hired convicted offenders and paid them under the table; Milo Sturgis treated that practice as revealing about Doss’s character.

The Account Becomes Leverage

After his arrest, Goad faced a third strike and tried to bargain by implicating Doss. His claim was that Doss had paid him a month before the robbery and had not expected him to follow through. That assertion gave investigators a possible explanation for Doss’s connection to the murder, while leaving the reliability of Goad’s account in question: it came from a man seeking a deal, and Milo Sturgis doubted that the impatient Doss would have accepted such a failure to act.

The Allegation Against the Scene Evidence

Goad’s reported claim that the killing was meant to look like serial murder can be read alongside the investigators’ reconstruction of the crime scene, though the account does not establish that he carried it out. Milo Sturgis noted that no blood was found outside Eldon Mate’s van and inferred that the killer had carefully cleaned up and left without obvious tracks. Cardboard had been used to cover the windows, while the bloodied front seat suggested that the van itself had served as the place where the attacker managed the aftermath. The contrast leaves Goad’s account as an investigative lead, not proof that he was the killer.

The Robbery as a Turning Point

The arrest transformed Quentin Goad from a would-be fugitive into a source for the Mate investigation. His account therefore entered the case under pressure: it could redirect suspicion toward Richard Doss, but it was offered by a jailed suspect seeking leniency, and the robbery itself did not establish that the alleged murder contract had been carried out.