Valley woman closer to justice for slain husband, 16 years later

Sixteen years ago, Rupert and Dorothy Thompson lay in bed in their Studio City home, making plans for the next day and the rest of their lives.

Moments later, their tranquility was shattered by an armed burglar, who fled after critically wounding Dorothy Thompson in the chest and fatally shooting her 73-year-old husband.

"We were planning our day while this man was in the house, but we didn't know it," Dorothy Thompson recalled Thursday. "I lost my bridge partner, my travel companion, my husband, my dear, sweet husband. My life changed."

As time passed, Thompson lost hope that authorities would ever find the intruder who killed her husband of 45 years. Then came the call that police had identified a suspect using DNA evidence he left at the scene.

"If you just hang in there and you look over these cases and make sure that everything's been done, then you can get lucky sometimes because everything is so much more sophisticated and advanced," said LAPD Detective Steve Castro, whose re-examination of the evidence led to the break in the case.

Castro, who works in the North Hollywood Division, began working on the cold case after hearing about the attack from a fellow officer.

"It was pretty vicious," Castro said. "You have two elderly people sleeping and this guy breaks in, and there's a murder."

Castro ran DNA found at the Thompsons' home through a national database, which led authorities to Kevin Bernard Smith, 35, a convicted drug trafficker serving time in a Mississippi prison.

The detective said that at the time the 1994 attack on the Thompsons, Smith was a petty criminal living at various locations in Los Angeles, including Northridge and North Hollywood.

Authorities have since extradited Smith, who is imprisoned at the California Institute for Men in Chino. He has been charged with capital murder, which could make him eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted.

For Dorothy Thompson, the news that a suspect was caught was bittersweet.

The gunshot left her paralyzed in one arm, and she had to move out of the couple's Studio City home because she couldn't maintain it. Her two sons moved away, fearful of bringing up their own children in an area where their grandfather was murdered.

"Nothing will bring my husband back," she said. "It does help to know it was random because I couldn't imagine who would want to hurt my husband and I."

On Jan. 26, 1994, Thompson recalled, she and Rupert had gone out to dinner and watched a movie before going to bed.

About 1 a.m., they heard the sound of breaking glass. Thinking it was an aftershock from the Northridge Earthquake nine days earlier, they stayed in bed and covered their heads with pillows to protect them from falling plaster.

While they waited, they talked about harvesting the oranges from their tree to give to people displaced by the quake. They chatted about taking a second vacation to Africa.

Then Dorothy Thompson got up to check for damage and turned on the lights. She saw a man standing at the foot of their bed, a gun in his hand.

She doesn't recall being shot, or the fight between the intruder and her husband. It was only after she regained consciousness in the hospital that she learned Rupert had been killed.

"And somehow or another, the man left," she said. "My husband crawled out and died in the front lawn and left the front door wide open and a neighbor ... saw a dead body on the lawn. And I was in there bleeding to death."

Dorothy Thompson still lives in the Valley, where she has tried her best to go on without Rupert.

"You learn to live with whatever's left," she said. "God doesn't put anything on your plate that you can't handle."

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_16282006