Crime Beat

take more than detective work to break the case.
    “If we don’t have anybody come forward with some information, we aren’t going to solve this one,” Quartararo said.
    That the case remains unsolved is frustrating to Kanan’s family. Patricia Kanan, now in her late 70s, sold the restaurant she operated with her sister. Because of ill health, she turned management of the shopping center over to her daughter, Patty.
    The older Kanan declined to comment on the case.
    “Frustration is the word for what we feel,” Patty Kanan said. “And we feel sadness. We really want to know who did this.”
    Patricia Kanan, who is unmarried, moved last year from the home she had shared with her sister and now lives with her daughter in an undisclosed location. Though the Kanans do not live in fear of the killer, they anxiously wait for justice.
    “My mother and our family have the basic concern that someone out there has killed someone and believes they have gotten away with it,” Patty Kanan said. “It could be anybody. It was a chilling and very calculated act. And that person is still out there. I hate the thought of someone getting away with murder.”
NEPHEW IDENTIFIED AS SOLE SUSPECT IN KANAN KILLING
    September 29, 1990
    Nearly six years after Judy Kanan, a strong-willed businesswoman and descendant of a pioneer family, was shot to death at a Woodland Hills horse stable, the investigation of the unsolved slaying has narrowed to one person—her nephew, according to police and court documents.
    A search warrant filed this month in Van Nuys Municipal Court identifies 34-year-old Michael Kanan, the son of the victim’s brother, as the killer.
    After the slaying, according to the court document, the suspect told an acquaintance who later became a police informant: “It’s a real trip to see something you’re responsible for. . . . The bitch got what she deserved.”
    Los Angeles police say they are seeking additional evidence before asking the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to file murder charges against Michael Kanan, who is in jail on an unrelated burglary charge.
    The suspect, through his attorney, denied having any part in the slaying.
    Judy Kanan, 68, was shot four times by a masked gunman in a raincoat on Jan. 29, 1985, as she followed her daily routine and arrived at a stable at the end of a cul-de-sac on Collins Street. She was there to feed six Arabian horses she owned. The killer gunned her down on the sidewalk and escaped in a stolen car that was later abandoned and set on fire.
    Police said little evidence was left behind at the shooting scene. And while the investigation stalled, the mystery of who killed Judy Kanan deepened.
    The victim was a descendant of the Waring family, which settled Agoura in the 1860s. By the 1980s, Judy Kanan and her older sister, Patricia Kanan, had parlayed inheritances and acquisitions into landholdings in Agoura worth millions of dollars.
    When she was gunned down, police acknowledged there was no shortage of potential suspects and concentrated largely on reviewing her business disputes. The killing prompted one Agoura businessman who was interviewed at the time to say: “You’re going to have half the population of Agoura as suspects. The most hated woman in Agoura got assassinated.”
    In January of this year, as the fifth anniversary of the killing approached, police said they still were no closer to solving the mystery. “I don’t have any idea who killed Judy Kanan,” Detective Phil Quartararo said at the time.
    Court records and police, however, reveal that investigators now believe the slaying was carried out by Michael Kanan and motivated by a financial dispute within the family.
    Shortly after the fifth anniversary of Judy Kanan’s death, a person who knows Michael Kanan came forward with details about the slaying. That person said he had been asked by the suspect to kill Judy Kanan.
    According to court records, the informant told police the slaying centered on a dispute between Judy Kanan and her brother, George Richard Kanan—Michael Kanan’s father—over a $2,600 loan. Coupled with that was the belief George Kanan impressed upon his son that Judy Kanan had unfairly controlled most of the family’s land, the informant said.
    “The informant indicated that George Richard Kanan hated his sister and preached this hatred to his son, Michael . . . ,” the search warrant reads in part. “George Kanan had preached to his son that Judy Kanan