Mystery Surrounds Toluca Lake Slaying

TOLUCA LAKE —  When the engine of his 1985 Dodge Omni died six months ago, Peter John Maloney didn’t rush to get it fixed. He shrugged off the need for a car and started walking the five miles each way to work.

On the night of Jan. 10, after picking up some groceries at Trader Joe’s, Maloney, 37, was walking along Riverside Drive so engrossed in the music blaring in his ears from his Walkman that he didn’t notice a man ride up next to him on a 10-speed bike. In an apparent robbery attempt, the man pulled out a gun and fatally wounded the New York native.

“They heard him say, ‘No, no, no,’ and then there was one major boom,” said resident Bob Murphy.

Taking nothing, the man rode off. Despite the efforts of a swarm of residents and passersby, Maloney died at the scene, his bags of groceries pushed up against a tree. Police would later say that neighbors had seen the man, who wore black pants and a black hooded sweatshirt, circling the area before the shooting. Police speculate the attacker may have watched Maloney get cash from an automated teller machine minutes earlier.

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Few clues have turned up in Maloney’s slaying, despite hundreds of police-issued fliers seeking tips. Burbank police detained a man on a bike shortly after the shooting, but he was quickly ruled out as a suspect because he was wearing all white.

LAPD Det. Mike Coffey of the North Hollywood bureau said initial investigations indicate that Maloney had no sizable debts, no known enemies or any other problems to indicate that the attacker might have been targeting him.

Like the shooting of Bill Cosby’s 27-year-old son, Ennis, last week, the incident seems to be a random armed robbery, as puzzling as it is tragic. “It looks like the guy either resisted or tried to flee the situation,” Coffey said. “And that’s why it probably happened.”

The shooting has not only shaken the eccentric Maloney’s small circle of friends, but has also frightened a community seemingly safe from murder.

Sandwiched between North Hollywood and Burbank, Toluca Lake is home to Hollywood legend Bob Hope and star Denzel Washington. It is a place where residents boast of walking their dogs, grabbing a cup of coffee or bopping down to the store with few worries. A haven for actors-to-be, it’s a community of 35,000 residents that area businessman Paul Ramsey once described as “kind of a poor man’s Beverly Hills.”

“It’s an awful thing,” said longtime resident Stephanie Vilardo, who watched horrified as Maloney’s body rested not far from her front door. “We walk around here all the time. Now I feel like we aren’t free to do that anymore.”

Walking for Maloney wasn’t merely exercise or done out of necessity; it was private time he cherished. “He said the walking gave him time to think,” said his friend and former co-worker Chris Merchant. “He found a solitude in it that he couldn’t get in any other activity.”

Killed just a few blocks from his North Hollywood apartment, Maloney was a voracious reader whose artistic edge defined his life.

“Pete was an ever-evolving kind of guy,” said Tammie Brandhurst, who worked with Maloney, a photo film developer, first in Burbank and most recently at Spectra American Color Lab in Sun Valley.

Eighteen years ago, fresh from his high school graduation on Staten Island, N.Y., Maloney joined the Navy in search of adventure. Stationed in San Diego, he met up with L.A. native Michael Alcala on board the Thomaston.

For two years, they crisscrossed the Pacific--to Australia, Japan and Thailand--drinking, partying and soaking up the cultures of the world. They even climbed Japan’s Mount Fuji in 1979.

Shy and soft-spoken, Maloney studied electronics, Alcala said, and became known as the “guy who took pictures and gave them out to the guys.”

Once he was discharged, Maloney decided he loved the sunny weather in Southern California. Alcala helped him pack his things, including more than 500 albums, in a car and they drove from New York to Los Angeles in 1981. Maloney worked a few odd jobs before starting a decade of employment at Master Lab in Burbank.

Both Merchant and Alcala would sometimes give rides to Maloney when he had major errands to run. A few weeks ago, Merchant was with Maloney when they discovered that a new Trader Joe’s store had opened in the area.

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“He would take on an interest and dedicate himself to it fully,” said Merchant, who with Alcala packed up Maloney’s belongings to ship back to his mother and sister in New York.

As they sorted through stacks of magazines, books, music and art in Maloney’s cluttered one-bedroom apartment last week, they recalled Maloney as the quintessential chameleon.

After chopping off his long reddish brown ponytail, he took on a buzzed look. He painted a self-portrait of himself as a bare-chested wild man wearing dark glasses. His two arms were splattered with tattoos, including one that Alcala remembered featured a “goofy clown that said have a nice day.”

Nicknamed “Swiss” by friends because “he was always so neutral,” Maloney had been hoping to start a business doing astrological charts. He was a vegetarian, a Buddhist and computer junkie. But despite strong opinions about his own lifestyle, friends say Maloney rarely judged other people.

“He had his own code of ethics and he didn’t expect anybody to live by them,” Merchant said fondly. “He wasn’t overtly analytical. He was very simple in what he wanted. He didn’t carry negative emotions around. Even if he knew about his death, he might have seen it as a consequence of his life.”