Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is the principal law-enforcement agency investigating the killings of Mitzi Elliot and Johan Rilz. Its work moves from the Malibu crime scene to interviews, forensic testing, and Walter Elliot’s arrest; later, the defense uses gaps in the investigation and a possible transfer of gunshot residue to challenge the prosecution’s account of the evidence.

Role and Investigative Procedure

After Elliot reported finding the bodies at his Malibu home, investigators took him to the Malibu substation while the lead detectives continued examining the scene. He was placed in an unlocked interview room and waited about three hours before the detectives arrived. They conducted a videotaped interview, initially described as an account of what he had found and done. When the questioning became an interrogation, Elliot was advised of his rights and chose to stop answering questions and request an attorney.

While Elliot waited at the substation, a homicide investigator at the department’s headquarters in Whittier prepared search warrants. A superior court judge signed warrants authorizing searches of the beach house and Elliot’s car, as well as gunshot-residue testing on Elliot’s hands and clothing. The trial testimony described warrants for the Elliot house and three cars: Elliot’s, his wife’s, and the Porsche in the garage. The department thus documented formal authority for searches and testing even though, as the defense later noted, law enforcement had broad latitude in gathering evidence.

Forensic Evidence and Arrest

After Elliot declined further questioning, investigators bagged his hands in plastic at the substation and transported him to headquarters. A criminalist used chemically treated disks to collect material from his hands and clothing. Laboratory processing found high levels of gunshot residue on disks wiped across his hands and sleeves. On the basis of the investigation and those results, Elliot was formally arrested on suspicion of murder and later booked into the county jail on two murder counts.

The department’s reports also recorded the sequence of Elliot’s custody: homicide detectives handled him as he was moved from the crime scene to the substation, then to headquarters, and finally to jail. That chain of custody appeared routine, but the defense’s review of the records drew attention to an earlier stage. The responding deputies were identified by patrol designations 4-alpha-1 and 4-alpha-2, and the defense connected one of those designations to the 4-alpha patrol car used in a separate case.

Challenges to the Investigation

The defense argued that the positive residue result had narrowed the inquiry too quickly. Once investigators believed Elliot had recently fired a weapon, Mickey Haller said, the investigation shifted from a broad search toward Elliot himself, leaving other possibilities insufficiently examined. In particular, Haller emphasized that Rilz had been in the United States for only four years, yet no investigator had gone to Germany to check his background or possible enemies there. He also questioned whether investigators had thoroughly examined Rilz’s connections in Los Angeles.

A separate discovery in the case raised questions about what the authorities had learned of Rilz. While reviewing the inherited legal-research account, Haller noticed that searches defaulted to English. Searching again in French and German led him quickly to a French newspaper article about Rilz. Haller told the court that he found it difficult to believe the Sheriff’s Department, the prosecution, and Interpol had all missed an article so readily located, while acknowledging that he could not say the discovery proved anything by itself. The episode sharpened the defense’s claim that significant lines of inquiry had been overlooked or information had not reached it.

Gunshot-Residue Transfer Dispute

At trial, the prosecution presented the department’s residue findings as part of its case against Elliot, and a videotape of his initial interview allowed jurors to assess his demeanor. The defense, in turn, called forensic expert Shamiram Arslanian. She agreed that the tests showed elevated levels of elements associated with gunshot residue, but testified that it was highly likely the material had transferred to Elliot inadvertently rather than being deliberately planted.

Arslanian’s proposed explanation centered on contact with the 4-alpha patrol car. In her opinion, residue first transferred to Elliot’s hands and arms when he was placed in the car with his hands behind his back. Movement during transport then transferred some of the material a second time onto the front panels of his jacket. She explained that the jacket readings were consistent with this sequence, while the zero reading from the shirt beneath it could be discounted if the jacket had been zipped during the shooting. The competing interpretations left the department’s positive test intact as a laboratory result, but contested what that result could establish about Elliot’s actions.