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12 The Canadian Statesman, Bowmanville, Wednesday, July 27,1994 Section Two D iana and Phil Bogdanoff lived in a mobile home park adjacent to El Capitan Beach in Santa Barbara, California. The 49-year-old Phil liked the area, particularly the beach. You see, El Capitan was a nude beach, and if there was anything he loved it was to shed his clothing clothing and spend a few hours soaking up the warm rays. It took a little coaxing, but he soon had Diana enjoying the nude sunbathing as much as he did. Diana was employed in a nearby hospital as a nurse's aide. Phil, an engineer, was her second husband. husband. She had obtained a divorce from husband No. 1 after many years of marriage. Her beautiful 18-year- old daughter, Stephanie, was very close to Diana and was a frequent visitor at the Bogdanoffs' trailer home. Once bitten, twice shy. Diana and Phil had dated for four years before marrying. This, then, was the background background of the stable, apparently happy Bogdanoff family family when a strange, but tragic, event took place on the nude beach. On Sept. 21,1989, Diana and Phil shed their clothing on the - beach, spread out towels and relaxed under the sun's warmth. Two fully clothed men, one white, one black, approached the couple. One of the men asked Phil if he had a joint. Startled, Phil replied that he didn't smoke grass. Without another word, the black man took a pistol out of his pocket and shot Phil in the shoulder. He then bent over, placed the weapon against Phil's head and fired a second time. Phil Bogdanoff fell dead on the sand of El Capitan Beach. The two men walked down the beach as Diana screamed for someone to fetch a doctor and call police. Detectives were at the scene in a matter of minutes. Diana, almost incoherent, managed to relate how Phil had been shot in cold blood. She was also able to describe the two assailants. Police were stymied. Who would kill someone on a nude beach in broad daylight over a joint? It simply didn't make sense. For a full month, detectives ran down every tip and clue that came their way, without concrete results. All that changed with the receipt of one phone call. The caller told police that he had an acquaintance, Ray Stock, who had told him a girlfriend had approached him to kill her stepfather. He had thought it a bit of a joke until he read about the Bogdanoff murder. Detectives took the call seriously and visited Ray Stock. Ray turned out to be a 29-year-old native of Bakersville who had never committed a violent act in his life. But he had quite a story to tell. R ay told police his former girlfriend, Stephanie Allen, had asked him to kill her stepfather, Phil Bogdanoff. Ray had been head over heels in love with Stephanie and had vowed he would commit the foul deed. To sweeten the pie, Stephanie had promised to pay him a $10,000 bonus. They had agreed to call on Phil at his mobile home and shoot him dead when he answered the door. Ray and Stephanie had driven over to the Bogdanoffs', but Ray had second thoughts. At the last minute, he realized he couldn't kill an innocent man, Stephanie was furious. The hot romance fizzled and died after the aborted attempt on Phil's life. Ray heard Stephanie had approached two other men to do the job. Police contacted Danny Kaplan and Brian Stafford, who confessed they had been infatuated with the beautiful Stephanie and had Max HAINES Crime Flashback agreed to kill her stepfather. Armed with shotguns, the two men and Stephanie waited along the highway highway for Phil to drive by. They intended to make the killing appear to be a random freeway shooting. When Phil didn't show up, the trio grew tired of waiting. Kaplan, like Ray Stock before him, got cold feet and told Stephanie to count him out of the scheme. He couldn't kill someone under any circumstances. The relationship between Danny and Stephanie was never the same after that, although they stayed in contact. Danny went on to tell police that one day, Brian Stafford and a friend, Ricky Rogers, walked into Stephanie's apartment while he was there. Both men were elated. They kept saying, "We did it, we did it. We blew the sucker away." Danny knew exactly who the two men meant. Based on his information, information, all three conspirators, Brian Stafford, Ricky Rogers and Stephanie Allen, were taken into custody and held on suspicion of murder. Stephanie was questioned first. She admitted she had plotted on three occasions to kill her stepfather. Then she threw her interrogators a curve. She informed them her mother had asked her to arrange Phil's murder because Phil often beat her and she wanted wanted him dead. Initially, Stephanie had refused to have anything to do with such a wild plan, but eventually, under pressure from her mother, she had agreed. After twice setting up the murder unsuccessfully, she had finally pulled it off by getting Brian and Ricky to do the job. On the day of the murder, Brian and Ricky had walked along the beach until they found Diana and Phil sunbathing. It had been far from a random killing, after all. Poor Phil Bogdanoff had been a target for months, without realizing his wife had been engineering his murder. murder. Diana's first husband, a Pentecostal minister, told police his 12-year marriage to Diana had not been a bed of roses. He led a rather quiet life, which Diana had agreed to share before their marriage. However, after the knot had been tied, she often partied far into the night. He had spent many evenings searching local bars in order to drag her home. On other occasions, she had stayed out all night. In 1980, they had divorced, but not before he learned.Diana had attempted to hire a man to kill him. P olice discovered Diana had tried on her own to hire a man to kill Phil, but had failed. That's when she elicited the help of her daughter. She told Stephanie that Phil was abusing her and had to be put to death. Stephanie loved her mother and wilted under the pressure. In 1990, Stephanie Allen pleaded guilty to second- degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life imprisonment. The relatively light sentence was in return for testimony against her mother. A few months later, Brian Stafford also agreed to testify against Diana. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, escaped the death penalty and received a term of 33 years to life imprisonment. It was established that Brian had fired the shots which had taken Phil Bogdanoffs life. Ricky Rogers pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to not more that 10 years in prison. In October, 1990, Diana Bogdanoff stood trial for the murder of her husband. The jury couldn't agree on a verdict and a mistrial was declared. Seven months later, she stood trial for a second time. Her defence relied heavily on the battered woman syndrome, which apparently apparently didn't hold water with the jury. Diana was found guilty of murder in the first degree. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. All four conspirators in the warped plot to kill Phil