except wasn t that pam s car in the lot? julie called her husband. and he said, call 911. so i called 911. and she said, do you want to file a missing persons report? and i said, i don t even know if she s missing. and then she saw someone who could help. right as i pulled in, ina was parked right over there and she was getting out of her car and walking towards me. and and you knew ina well. and i knew ina. right. so i jumped out of my car and i said, pam didn t come home last night. ina hess was pam s friend and longtime office manager. inasaid pam seemed fine the day before. said when she left, around 4:30 p. m., pam was meeting with her last client of the day behind closed doors. but ina had a key to the building and office, so the two women headed in. i opened the door there and the lights were all off and blinds were all pulled.
days before she was killed, pam fed-exed kirk a demand, pay close to $4,000 in expenses for the kids, or else. she was giving him five days to pay it or she was going to take him back to court. office manager ina said pam told her she was truly afraid of kirk. i just warned her that when she worked late at night, make sure she went out the front door where all the lights were on, and make sure that she was, you know, always cautious. money. the root of all evil? and something else they found. what was that telltale residue in kirk s car? it was enough. on a summer morning, eight months after pam zimmerman s death, a cop turned on his squad car lights and sirens, pulled over a motorist, read him his rights. kirk zimmerman was under arrest for murder. coming up greed. hate. murder.
ina hess stared, rooted to the spot. i guess i kind of went into shock, because i just i saw her lying there. but you had no idea what had happened. no. like she could have had a heart attack or something. could have. or maybe she tripped over a footrest behind the reception desk. kind of in the back of my mind, i m like, well, did she hit her head? police arrived in minutes. julie s phone still pinging. the kids are still texting, i keep saying, someone needs to go to them and tell them what s going on. eventually, officers went to the high school. one by one, pam s children were called to a conference room, where the police told them their mother was dead. that was the worst part, that they didn t tell us all together. they brought me into this room, and there s david, and his and his cheeks are stained with tears. and i just had to see that. and then they told me, and then i was just bawling, and then david starts bawling again.
lost a lot of money. ina hess told the investigators that pam s last client, day she was murdered, was a man named eldon whitlow. did he have any beefs with pam? there was no evidence that eldon had any beefs. they had a long-term, professional relationship where she was helping him with his investments. whitlow told detectives his meeting with pam was uneventful. he left around 5:40 p. m., he said, then had dinner with his girlfriend. he was cooperative. but he owned a. 9-millimeter gun. and she was shot with one of those. that matched the type of gun that she was killed with. now that was a development. eldon whitlow was considered a person of interest. detectives got a search warrant, and eldon turned over a. 9-millimeter. the. 9-millimeter? they sent it off for testing. and as they waited for the results, they drilled
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THE GUSS REPORT-In the past 20 years, nowhere in Los Angeles has quality of life fallen harder than in Venice.
That doesn t mean Venice has the worst quality of life in the City or even the County of Los Angeles. But conditions worsened more in Venice since the beginning of the 21st century than virtually everywhere else in the area.
LA City Councilmember
Mike Bonin gets leveled with the blame as Venice is a unique pocket of chaos within the affluent but widely troubled District 11 that he has represented since 2013.
Bonin, 54, is a complicated and conflicted soul if ever there was one, having received an undergrad degree from Harvard in 1989, but who also survived a brief battle of quasi-homelessness and continues to survive addiction one day at a time. I don t write that as an excuse for Bonin, but context matters, so bear with me.