Crime Beat

LIFE
Neighbors who knew the amiable man are shaken by the murder charge against him.
    LOS ANGELES TIMES
    April 22, 1990
    T O THOSE WHO KNEW him in Woodland Hills, Michael Bryant was a soft-spoken and generous man who kept mostly to himself.
    Though reclusive, he was far from unfriendly. He was quick to volunteer his help to neighbors. He sent Christmas cards and friendly notes to his landlady. He liked to show off the tricks he had taught his pet Doberman.
    Bryant, 44, told people he was a freelance photographer. But often he spent his time gardening in his fenced backyard and was proud of the cherry tomatoes he gave to friends. “They were better than you could buy in a supermarket,” his landlady said.
    But authorities say Michael Bryant and the life he led in Los Angeles was a facade; that, in fact, Bryant was Francis W. Malinosky, a Vermont school administrator who dropped from sight in 1979 after he became the prime suspect in the disappearance of a teacher with whom he had been romantically involved.
    Malinosky’s double life came to an end earlier this month when he was traced by local and Vermont authorities to Woodland Hills. He was arrested and charged with the murder of the missing teacher. And while Malinosky waits in Los Angeles County jail for an extradition hearing, mystery still surrounds him.
    Investigators say that when they searched Malinosky’s belongings they found cameras and a business card suggesting he, indeed, was a photographer. But the only photos found were of him smiling amid fields of marijuana plants. No tomatoes were found at his house, but police said several pounds of packaged marijuana seeds were found in the garage. And in the unpretentious, 23-year-old Volkswagen he drove, investigators found a coffee can crammed with $217,000 in $100 bills.
    “Finding this guy just opened up more questions,” said Sgt. Leo Blais, a Vermont State Police detective who has tracked the Malinosky case for years. “I am trying to get an idea of what he has been doing for 10 years and it is hard. We don’t know much about him.”
    Those who thought they knew Michael Bryant of Woodland Hills have also had to face the same enigma. A man they viewed as a good neighbor or tenant is charged with murder and is suspected of hiding behind at least four aliases and earning his living at least in part by selling marijuana seeds along with instructions on their planting and cultivation.
    “This really comes out of left field,” said Lilian Darling Holt, Bryant’s landlord for nearly five years. “It is devastating. Michael was a marvelous tenant and person.
    “This whole thing doesn’t seem right,” she said. “It seems that over the years there would have been something that would now click and I’d be able to say, ‘Son of a gun, I now see how this could be.’ But there is nothing like that. I just feel very bad. I wish I could do something for him.”
    Holt is not alone in being both perplexed and supportive of Bryant. Neighbors he was friendly with in the 4900 block of Topanga Canyon Boulevard have volunteered to care for his dog while he is in jail. And an attorney who met Bryant a few years ago in a coffee shop is now helping him fight extradition to Vermont.
    “There is complete shock among those who knew him,” said the attorney, Greff Michael Abrams. “He was the kind of guy most people would want as a neighbor.”
    Abrams said Malinosky disappeared from Vermont and began using false names because he was being hounded by authorities for a crime he did not commit.
    “There is more to this case than meets the eye,” Abrams said. “You don’t need to be a genius to see why he would leave Vermont. He believed a witch hunt was under way, and he decided to leave.”
    But authorities insist they have made no mistake. Malinosky is the only suspect in the Nov. 5, 1979, disappearance and apparent murder of Judith Leo-Coneys. The 32-year-old mother of a small boy disappeared after telling friends she was going to a house owned by Malinosky.
    “Everyone out here I talk to about him can’t believe it,” said Blais while he was in Los Angeles last week investigating Malinosky’s life here. “They keep telling me he isn’t the type.”
    So far Blais has established that Malinosky lived in the Los Angeles area in the early 1980s and worked as a house painter. He later moved to Utah and then back to Los Angeles, where beginning in late 1985 he lived alone in the two-bedroom Topanga Canyon