SANTA CRUZ -- A young woman who was staying at the house where a Los Angeles businessman allegedly was beaten to death during a drug deal gone bad last summer told detectives the suspected killers told her to clean up blood spatter in the garage of the Felix Street home.
The information came out in court Tuesday, the second day of the preliminary hearing for three men accused of kidnapping, robbing and murdering Elias Sorokin, 29, in July.
Adam Hunt, a 29-year-old Watsonville man, Stewart Skuba, a 32-year-old Santa Cruz resident, and Kenneth Clamp, a 39-year-old ex-con from the San Lorenzo Valley, have pleaded not guilty.
Watsonville police stopped Skuba and the woman, 19-year-old Kristen Roberts of Santa Cruz, July 30 on suspicion they were driving a stolen vehicle, but connected them to the Sorokin homicide investigation, according to Sheriff's Office Sgt. Ian Patrick, who testified Tuesday about what Roberts told detectives.
She said she saw Sorokin's wallet and pickup at the Felix Street house on July 20, Patrick testified. That was the night Sorokin went missing while driving from Oakland to Los Angeles via Santa Cruz.
Roberts, who is facing robbery charges for allegedly trying to use Sorokin's credit cards, was staying on the second floor of the Felix Street
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house with her father and brother. Skuba, whom she had dated in the past, lived in a first-floor bedroom, she told Patrick.
The night Sorokin disappeared, she was watching the Disney Channel upstairs when she heard a scuffle on the first floor and someone saying, "Please don't," Patrick testified. Roberts's father woke up because of the fight and wanted to call 911, but she talked him out of it, Patrick said.
During her talks with Skuba, Roberts told investigators she learned there had been a fight and that Skuba was upset because Hunt had left. Patrick said she told him she listened to Clamp ask Skuba "if he really wanted to go through with it, and if he'd be able to live with it for the rest of his life."
Roberts said she had been aware there was going to be a marijuana deal in the house that night and that the men "were going to jack him for the pot," Patrick said in court. Skuba also had told her he had a jar of chloroform, a sedative, in his bedroom, according to the detective's testimony.
That night, Roberts said she watched from a second-story back balcony as Skuba took a blue blanket into the garage, that she smelled an odd chemical odor and that she heard a dragging sound in the garage. Moments later, she heard a tailgate open, a thud and then two vehicles started. Skuba and Clamp were gone for more than an hour. During that time, she cleaned up drops of blood in the downstairs bathroom and the garage, Patrick testified.
Although Roberts never saw Sorokin in the house, she told Patrick she went in front of the house at one point that night and saw an unfamiliar pickup, which matched the description of Sorokin's Toyota truck. She also sneaked into Skuba's room, where she told Patrick she saw about 10 1-pound bags of marijuana, canisters that said "green beans" and "cannabis pills," a silver Apple laptop and a black wallet that contained credit cards and a driver's license in Sorokin's name, the detective testified.
When Skuba and Clamp came home, Roberts said Skuba told her they got into a fight with the man who brought marijuana to the house because the chloroform didn't work and that "they dumped his body off a cliff," possibly on the North Coast.
In the following days, Roberts connected media reports about Sorokin's disappearance to the events at her house but did not come forward until she was arrested, Patrick said in court.
The hearing, which began Monday afternoon in front of Judge Jeff Almquist, continues this morning. It will conclude with Almquist ruling if there is enough evidence to hold Skuba, Hunt and Clamp for trial. All face life in prison.
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