Murder
On June 13, 2004, sometime around 11 a.m., Keven Lee Graff, a 27-year-old homeless man, broke into Lees' home. Graff attacked the 91-year-old Lees and decapitated him. Graff then left the home, carrying Lees' severed head, and broke into a neighboring house. The occupant of the home was 69-year-old retired doctor, Morley Engleson. Graff then attacked and killed Engleson, who was on the telephone making a plane reservation. The Southwest Airlines ticketing agent heard the attack and phoned police. Before police could arrive, Graff stole Engleson's 2001 Mercedes-Benz and left the scene.
During a search through Engleson's house, police discovered Lees' severed head lying on a bed. Lees' longtime girlfriend, Helen Colton, discovered Lees' headless body, covered by blankets, in his bedroom some five hours later when she arrived to pick Lees up for an event at the Academy headquarters in Beverly Hills.
The following day, Graff caught the attention of security guards at the gates of Paramount Pictures when he began behaving erratically; talking to himself and yelling at passing cars. One security guard identified Graff from a picture that was shown on a televised news conference about the double murders, and phoned police. When questioned about the crimes, Graff claimed that a man on the streets of Hollywood gave him methamphetamine and Ecstasy the night before the murders claiming he had no memory of committing the murders.
In February 2008, Graff, under a plea agreement, pleaded guilty to ten felonies for the murders of Lees and Engelson. Under the plea agreement, Graff will receive two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Read more about this topic: Robert Lees
Famous quotes containing the word murder:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along the street. How can I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Television has brought back murder into the home—where it belongs.”
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)