|
The death of a physician is ruled a suicide until evidence uncovered in a new autopsy reveals that he was murdered.  Ted Loseff  Ted was found dead, an apparent suicide CASE DETAILS On February 23, 1974, police were called to the Los Angeles home of Dr. Ted Loseff. The call was made by his wife, Wilda, who told officers that her husband was armed. When the police arrived, Wilda was outside the house with the housekeeper, and Edward Jay, a family friend.  Was the suicide note a fake? Ted didn’t answer the door and there was no sign of him anywhere in the house. Finally, in the garage, officers found Ted’s body in his car. The engine was running and a hose connected to the tailpipe had been fed into the car’s interior through a window. To authorities at the scene, the evidence of suicide was overwhelming and there was no further investigation. No fingerprints were taken, no autopsy was performed, and no questions were asked. Zel Loseff is Ted’s mother:
Zel said that the discrepancies became clear to her in a dream:
In her dream, Zel remembered that the driveway gates were damaged and difficult to open. Because of that, Ted had always parked in front of the house. To Zel, the implications of the dream were clear and disturbing. She believed the suicide had been staged and that her son had been murdered. But Zel’s suspicions alone were not enough to get the case reopened. She decided to track down her son’s former housekeeper. To protect her identity, we’ll call her Mary.  Vomit was found on the bedspread Based on Mary’s sworn testimony at a coroner’s inquest, she said that on the day Ted died, she arrived at his home around 10:00 A.M. Ted told her that he was divorcing his wife, Wilda, and that she wouldn’t be staying at the house anymore. But, according to Mary, around 2:00 P.M., Wilda showed up at the home. She parked her car and went right upstairs. A few minutes later, Mary heard screaming and yelling. Soon after, Ted dragged Wilda down the stairs. Wilda yelled to Mary that Ted had a gun, but Mary didn’t see one. In her sworn testimony, Mary stated:
 Was Ted actually murdered? After speaking with the police, Mary said that she tried to call Ted at least twenty times between three and eight P.M. Every time, the line was busy. At last, Mary got through, but no one answered. She decided to call the police again. Within the hour, police had found Ted’s body. They suspected that Ted had killed himself. The discovery of a note in an upstairs bedroom bolstered their conclusion. However, to Mary, it was the first of several alarming discrepancies. During her testimony, she said:
As she stared at Ted’s body, Mary said in her testimony that she realized something else was wrong:
The discrepancies became impossible to ignore. In the kitchen, Mary found several empty beer cans and four dirty glasses. Ted rarely drank. A week later, Mary found odd stains on a bedspread in the guestroom. Wilda told Mary that it was vomit from the dogs who had been sick the night before. However, Mary remembers the dogs being in a kennel at that time. Later, when she washed the bedspreads, the areas where the supposed dog vomit was had completely disintegrated. Ted’s mother, Zel, said she was convinced that a crime had occurred:
In 1978, four years after her son’s death, Zel finally won a legal battle to have Ted’s body exhumed for an autopsy. The pathologist found clear evidence that Ted had suffered a violent vomiting spell moments before his death. According to forensic pathologist Dr. Irving Root:
Fueled by the autopsy results, Zel pieced together a theory explaining her son’s death. She believes it was premeditated murder and that Ted was assaulted soon after Wilda and the housekeeper left the house. She thinks that the people who killed Ted were close to Wilda because they knew that the back door would be open. The autopsy also indicated Ted had been involved in a struggle. Zel said that she believes he was overpowered by at least two men, who forced poison down his throat:
All afternoon, the housekeeper had been getting busy signals when she tried to call Ted. Zel believes that hanging up the phone was a pre-arranged signal from the killers to Wilda that their job was done. Eight years after Ted’s death in March of 1982, the Los Angeles County coroner reopened the case. A witness told authorities that the so-called suicide note had indeed been written by Ted. But the witness also revealed that Ted wrote the message two years before his death after an argument with Wilda. The coroner’s inquest ultimately ruled that Ted’s death was a homicide. But on May 1, 1983, before police could investigate, Ted’s wife Wilda died of a drug and alcohol overdose. Now, investigators are at a standstill on the case. Someone, they believe, may have gotten away with murder. Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu. |
Michelle
I always like to consult multiple sources before forming an opinion. Read an article from the LA Times. Its clear that Zelda Loseff loved her son and put all her resources into this case (probably over half a million dollars in today’s money, maybe more), and law enforcement was uncommonly compassionate towards her. Some of the things Unsolved omitted were that the garage was locked from the inside, the number of coroners and investigators Mrs. Loseff hired- six private investigators, five attorneys, four forensic pathologists and a handwriting expert- yet only 1 was willing to go out on a limb and make the conclusion presented, the inquest concluded that he did die by suicide via carbon monoxide asphyxiation and not poisoning, and most importantly- that he had made a suicide attempt just 2 years earlier in 1972.
No one disputes his first suicide attempt, which coincidentally is the same year when the suicide note found the night Ted died was suggested to have previously been from. Also when Wilda died, the inquest into Ted’s death was already completed and upheld the original conclusion, and she was living on the other side of the country married to another man. The case wasn’t reopened until 1983, years after Wilda’s death. LAPD put their best detectives on it, including one of the detectives from the Hillside Strangler case, which found that Zelda’s claims were only speculation.
If this was staged by Wilda, why did she flag down the housekeeper and have her call the police as soon as they got to the housekeeper’s home and tell the cops Ted had a gun? Why would Wilda want the police to show up when her friends were supposedly busy poisoning Ted, changing his clothing, cleaning out the garage (where did they put all those boxes?), fixing the gate, and all the other alleged things that would have taken them hours to do? If anything having the housekeeper call the police is something she did out of concern for Ted, as she is no longer at the house the only person Ted is a threat to at that point is Ted, her husband who she knows to be suicidal.
There’s a lot of bad information out there on message boards, such as saying Wilda died in the midst of the ’83 investigation & implying she died of suicide after learning the case was reopened, when she actually died years earlier. Also saying that people who die from carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust fumes don’t vomit, they can and many times do. Also intoxication prior to carbon monoxide poisoning can lessen and even eliminate the physical signs of carbon monoxide poisoning such as nausea and vomiting. People can also aspirate / choke on their own vomit without puking on themselves. As anyone who’s accidentally choked on their own spit for a moment can attest, you don’t have to be lying in a pile of liquid to inhale it, it just has to be in your mouth and go down the wrong pipe, same goes for vomitus. Not to be unpleasant, just speaking the truth.
Also there are a lot of things that are labeled suspicious that are easily explainable- like the beer cans, dirty glasses, and cigarettes in the house the morning after. I find its much more likely that after learning her husband succeeded at taking his own life Wilda had friends over that night to comfort her and alcohol was involved. Its a much smaller leap than assuming the killers took a break to smoke and drink and left everything out and Wilda would have just left it. Also the “neglecting to have Ted’s headstone placed for weeks” comment, it takes weeks to months to get a headstone made. I know from personal experience but anyone can google it, that’s just a fact.
Its a bummer, and I do understand why Zelda feels / felt the way she does, it was her son, but we should remember that Wilda has a family too. It is irresponsible for Unsolved to intentionally leave out that Ted Loseff attempted suicide 2 years earlier, because if they had it wouldn’t be nearly as compelling of a story. Also, nearly as important as leaving off that Ted was known to be suicidal is leaving out how much money Zelda threw at this case. She’s not wrong for wanting to spend it, but it was wrong for people to have kept taking it. I do think Zelda Loseff couldn’t accept and therefore believed in her heart that her son did not kill himself, and so she felt compelled to try to buy justice not unlike many legal teams do- if a forensic expert won’t agree with the narrative you want, fire them and hire another. I get it. It just didn’t work in this case because the real facts are too powerful to overcome.
Mel B.
Given that this is one of the more obvious cases of foul play I’ve seen on the show, it is shameful that the police refused to investigate this as a homicide despite the cause of death being officially changed to homicide. It seems the one who arranged the killing died just nine years after Ted’s death, but the hired killers could still be identified and brought to justice if they are still alive.
The failure to solve such an obvious homicide is proof of the complicity of the police in this and all other crimes. What a disgraceful and corrupt country we live in.
Richard Meyer
One of my fellow orthopedic residents in NY originally had accepted a job offer from Dr. Loseff.
Dr. Loseff’s wife informed him of the suicide, but did ask him to take the offer anyway. Fortunately, he did not.
erwin
desgraciado Dr Loseff
Andria De Toro
Zel is my aunt. She did not once waiver.
Cheryl Hyatt
A Cousin I never met.
DJ Danny Rand
Quick question: has anyone looked into the relationship between Wilda and Edward Jay? I’m asking because according to the recreation; Edward was the one who found him… How did he end up there at the time police showed up? Why isn’t Edward anywhere else to be seen in the investigation or story at all?
thinkingoutloud
Wilda obviously had Ted killed and made it look like she killed himself. She died of drug and alcohol overdose years later which probably correlates to the beer cans and glasses Mary found in the house. So sad, so obvious the wife was in on it. Weird the wife never commented on anything. She was involved. Rip Ted, didn’t deserve that
Darren D
She knew the cops would figure it out so she probably drank and drugged herself to death
Anonymous
Poor guy, he looks nice. I feel bad for these people that are killed just for trying to leave their significant other. Obviously like in this case once heads cool the remorse eats you alive, eats you to death.
ted anderson
This is one of the better stories in here.