Couple’s slayings take bizarre twist

Torus Tammer

Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators think they have

finally put together the missing pieces of the puzzle in last year’s

slayings of a Huntington Beach doctor, Kenneth C. Stahl, and his wife,

Carolyn Oppy-Stahl.

Detectives disclosed this week that the execution-style killings of

the couple in their car on the side of Ortega Highway in San Juan

Capistrano on Nov. 20, 1999, was a case of a murder for hire gone awry.

Investigators alleged that Kenneth Stahl, 57, an anesthesiologist, for

some months methodically planned the murder of his 44-year-old wife, an

optometrist.

On Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Department released details of his plan,

which consisted of taking his wife on a surprise romantic dinner followed

by a drive down a desolate part of the Ortega Highway, where she was to

be shot by a paid killer.

Authorities said Kenneth Stahl paid his reputed mistress, Adriana

Vasco, 33, of Anaheim, some $30,000 for his wife’s murder.

Detectives said they made a connection between Kenneth Stahl and Vasco

in part because of cellular telephone records for the doctor that showed

numerous calls to the woman.

But the kinks in the case do not stop there, according to Detective

Steve Doan, a 16-year veteran who said he has seen many multiple murder

cases but none quite like this.

“The twists in this case is what makes it unique,” he said. “I’ve seen

a lot of things . . . but this is just disturbing.”

The twist comes with Dennis Earl Godley, 30, who was charged this week

with killing the Huntington Beach couple, Doan said.

Godley’s suspected accomplice, who also was charged with murder, was

his girlfriend -- Vasco.

Authorities think only Oppy-Stahl was supposed to be killed but that

something went wrong in the plot and the doctor was shot too.

In addition to murder charges, Godley and Vasco face

special-circumstance allegations of multiple murder, killing for

financial gain and lying in wait, which Doan said makes them eligible for

the death penalty.

Family members of the victims could not be reached for comment.