Man Killed in 1981 Shootout Linked to Slaying

A man shot and killed by Redondo Beach Police in 1981 may have been involved in a 1978 stabbing death, Los Angeles Police Department cold-case detectives announced Wednesday.

Burbank resident Richard Daniel Bower, 20, was killed in a shootout that left one Redondo Beach police officer wounded Jan. 12, 1981.

Investigators believe Bower was one of two men who fatally stabbed Robert Rathbun, 45, while burglarizing Rathbun's home on Lanark Street in Canoga Park on May 20, 1978, Detectives Rick Jackson and Elizabeth Estupinian told City News Service.

Rathbun's 18-year-old son, who was also stabbed and left for dead, survived, according to a news release from the LAPD.

A witness to the attack helped police develop a composite sketch of one of the suspects at the time.

Late last year, detectives ran fingerprints from the Rathbun case through multiple fingerprint databases, according to the news release. The prints matched Bower's.

Police had arrested Bower both the week before and the week after Rathbun's slaying on unrelated charges, the LAPD said. The booking photos at the time showed a "striking resemblance" to the composite sketch.

"Amazingly, the witness who assisted in the making of the composite drawing positively identified a photograph of Richard Bower as the suspect she saw 33 years before," the LAPD said in the news release. "She noted his 'good looks,' as she indicated in her original statements in 1978, as well as his 'droopy' right eye … She recalled having the composite artist alter his original drawing in an attempt to narrow the right eye to reflect it being 'droopy.'"

Police are still trying to identify the second suspect. Anyone with information is asked to contact cold-case detectives at 213-486-6810.

City News Service contributed to this report.