The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 16

A16 Why has the current owner kept the home as it was on Dec. 6, 1959? Will another family ever again bring life to the estate once described in a sales ad as and uilt in 1925, the three-story Spanish revival-style home has a basement that boasts quarters. The first floor features an entrance hall flanked by a glassed-in conservatory and large living room. Toward the back is a den, a dining room and the kitchen. Four master-bedroom-size sleeping chambers are on the second floor.

Abar-equipped ballroom measuring 20 feetby 36 feet is on the third level. Real estate experts have suggested that the mansion, with its spectacular view of the Los Angeles Basin and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, could fetch as much as $2.9 million if sold. one has lived there since the said Dr. Cheri Lewis, who grew up across the street from the mansion and still lives in the neighborhood. Lewis vividly remembers the predawn morning when Perelson, 50, killed his 42-year-old wife, Lillian, and severely beat his teenagedaughter.

When two younger children were awakened by the screams, Perelson told them they were simply having a bad dream, his youngest daughter told back to bed. This is a he told 11-year- old Debbie. She and her 13-year-old brother, Joel, escaped injury. Eighteen-year-old JudyePerelson ran from the mansion and staggered to a house. She was treated at Central Receiving Hospital and then taken to General Hospital with a possible skull fracture, The Times would report the next day.

came to our door. I remember having my hand in her recalls Lewis, now a Beverly Hills dentist. used to baby-sit the children there. I was supposed to spend the next night there, in Police found Perelson lying dead on the floor next to his blood- soaked bed. He was still clutching the hammer.

On a nightstand next to his bed, investigators found an open copy of which was opened to Canto 1. upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost read the passage. Detectives speculated that Perelson, a physician affiliated with an Inglewood medical clinic, was distressed by financial difficulties. In Judye sports car, police found a note written to an aunt that told of the family being the merry-go-round again, same problems, same worries, only tenfold. My parents, so to speak, are in a bind The teenager spoke of getting a job to help the family out.

After the rampage, relatives took the younger Perelson children to the East Coast, Lewis said. The current whereabouts of the three are unknown. The story of the murder-suicide and the locked-up mansion has been told and retold ever since, each time a newcomer moves into the neighborhood or when visitors come upon it. House painter Steve Kalupski was puzzled one summer day eight years ago when he glanced over at the mansion from a neighboring dwelling where he was working. Through a grimy window, he said he could see gifts piled next to what in the dimness appeared to be a Christmas tree.

asked the owner of the home where we were working why it was there, and she told me the said Kalupski, a Hollywood resident who now is an ad agency producer. His friends believe him when he told them what seen. So he began a ritual of driving them to the Los Feliz hillside to show them the abandoned mansion. He took Hollywood Internet entrepreneur Babette Papaj there two months ago. was dark and scary.

I was afraid to get out of the she said. Neighboring Glendower Place resident ShereeWaterson said a friend of hers tried one night to check out the mansion in what she describes as Nancy Drew The woman pushed open a rear door and walked in, but get far before a burglar alarm went off. She turned around and left, joking later about when she returned to home. Soon, her hand was throbbing painfully. been bitten by a black widow.

There was a red vein going up her arm. She had to go to the said Waterson, a clothing company executive. nights later the alarm kept going off at my house on my back door. But there was no one there. It was like the ghost was following A year after the murders, in 1960, the mansion was sold in a probate action to aLincoln Heights couple, Emily and Julian Enriquez.

Neighbors remember that the pair visited the house and brought property there to store but move in. In time, the place gradually fell into disrepair. Antique light fixtures dating from the 1920s disappeared from the outside. Over the years, neighbors say they have helped maintain the property by painting a street-side garage and tidying up the frontyard. They placed achain across a driveway that leads to the rear of the mansion, giving each nearby resident a key to its lock.

Several years ago the city required current owner Rudy Enriquez to replace stucco that had peeled from the sides of the house and front walkway walls and torepaint the place, neighbors say. had major explained JudeMargolis, a former neighborhood resident who now lives in Hancock Park. were coming in. Everybody was bringing guests up there. One night I was sitting outside and I noticed that people were over there having a picnic in the said Margolis, an artist.

(The burglar alarm was installed after that.) Enriquez inherited the mansion when his mother died in 1994. Since then, he has been approached many times by potential buyers but has steadfastly refused to sell. He tells everyone he decided what he wants to do with the property. asked him why not lease it, at least. You have a house sit empty for 50 years and not expect it to fall apart.

a tear-down now. a Margolis said. Enriquez never invited her into the mansion when he visited it. Another neighbor, Steven Hurley, has never been inside, either. are all kinds of stories about the house.

a very nice man. just not interested in doing anything with that house. never going to sell said Hurley, a lighting company sales manager. Enriquez, a 77-year-old retired music store manager who lives in the Mount Washington area, said he remains uncertain about his know that I want to live there or even stay he said. He might relocate to Hawaii or Arizona, he added.

But it has nothing to do with the violent past. never looked at it as being he said. a time I had two cats inside there and I had to go often to feed them. I still go there often I was there last night, in fact. Ithink now be going more often.

only spooky thing there is me. Tell people to say their prayers every morning and evening and be bob.pool@latimes.com Times researcher Robin Mayper contributed to this story. Estate remains frozen in time Mansion, from Genaro Molina Los Angeles Times MURDER SITE: The hilltop Los Feliz mansion where Dr. Harold Perelson killed his wife and then himself in 1959. It has sat vacant ever since.

101 2 110 134 5 5 10 110 Downtown Los Angeles Los Feliz Glassell Park Elysian Park GREEK THEATRE Los Angeles River Colorado Blvd. Glendale Blvd. 1 MILE Paul Duginski Los Angeles Times Silver Lake Griffith Park Crime scene Los Angeles Glendale have a house sit empty for 50 years and not expect it to fall apart. a tear-down now. a Margolis, aformer neighborhood resident, on the Los Feliz mansion where Dr.

Harold Perelson killed his wife and then himself latimes.com Previous Column One articles are available online. much control of my environment. I felt powerless. And that gave me a sense of predictability. I reflecting back on my childhood, I know it functional.

It was pretty pretty dysfunctional, and whose Suleman elaborate in the portion of the interview released by NBC (more will be broadcast on on Monday and on on Tuesday). But she said her childhood made her yearn for many children of her own. was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge she said. Considerably more detail is provided in the 332 pages of documents released by the state in response to a public records request by The Times. Those paint a picture of a placid suburban childhood.

Suleman herself said she was well- loved and close to her parents. Early struggles Born in Fullertonand raised in La Puente, Hacienda Heights and Rowland Heights, she grew up in a and home environment, Suleman told a state-appointed doctor who was reviewing a tion claim. She enjoyed school- workand earned grades that were above described herself as bic, and said she was brought up Protestant and continuedto practice her religion. She is portrayed as an outgoing woman with many former cheerleader who liked reading and writing. Not long after high school, Suleman began her quest as a single woman to have a family of her own.

In 1995, she had the first of three ectopicpregnan- cies, a condition that routinely ends in miscarriage and can be dangerous to the mother. The records are unclear about whether those pregnancies were the result of artificial insemination. Ayear later, she married Marcos Gutierrez, a produce manager. She also earned a psychiatric technician license from Mt. San Antonio College and began working at Metropolitan State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Norwalk.

It was there that she sustained the injury that led to the compensation claim. On Sept. 18, 1999, 20 patients began rioting. Suleman intervened, and during the melee, a female patient flipped over a heavy wooden desk that landed on back, causing a herniated disc injury that dogged her for years.Ulti- mately, Suleman was paid nearly $170,000 in compensation benefits during an eight-year period that ended last December, when she resigned from her job. Although she had remained on the staff, she had returned to work onlybriefly after the injury.

At the time, she complained of continued pain. In 2000, she separated from Gutierrez, a split she blamedin parton her withdrawal and lack of interest in life. want to keep bringing him Suleman said. want him to move on with his All the while, she kept trying to conceive. According to her mother, she used sperm from a friend, not Gutierrez.

Roller coaster When she became pregnant again in 2000, she was so nervous after multiple failed attempts that she want to talk about it to anyone, she told apsychologist who was evaluating her as part of her work- claim. thought I would jinx Suleman told Dennis A. Neha- men. the most wonderful, best thing ever happened in my I was still thinking too good to be When you have a history of miscarriages you think it will take a During her pregnancy and after the birth of her first child, records indicate, she experienced wild mood swings. Despite her joy at being pregnant, she told Nehamen, was during that time I became depressed and I just wanted to Nehamen said in his report that the depression was not related to her back injury, but stemmed from powerful and uncontrollable emotions associated with her pregnancy the fear that it would end and her elation that it might be brought to fruition and she would realize her dream of having a Another doctor disagreed and diagnosed her with posttraumatic stress disorder.

After the baby was born, the emotional roller coaster continued. This time, she was by turns elated and despairing and also terrified that the baby would be kidnapped or injured. husband or my mother has to take me almost she told one of the doctors. Despite the separation from her husband in 2000, they attempted at least one reconciliation after the birth of the first baby. They split again, but did not divorce until January 2008, court records show.

Her back injury grew worse as the result of a traffic accident in 2001, which occurred on the way home from a appointment, she reported. Pregnancy helped either, doctors said. At one point, she said, the pain was so intense, she lift her 3- month-old infant. She later told a therapist that the baby has helped my have a she said. the most wonderful thing in Doctors declared her resilient and strong, though one did question her for psychological Over the next several years, Suleman had five more children, including a set of twins.

According to her mother, Angela the NBC interview, all of them were fathered by the same sperm donor and conceived through in vitro fertilization. She also went back to school, earned a degree in child development and began pursuing a degree in counseling at California State University at Fullerton. Then, last year, with more embryos still frozen, she decided she wanted one more her mothersaid. Instead of one more baby, doctors told her she was pregnant with seven. She carried them for 31 weeks, declining prevailing medical advice to reduce the number of embryos.

On delivery day, the surprises kept coming. She had eight babies. Nowthe woman who said it was her dream to have a large family has 14 children. Times staff writer Catherine Ho contributed to this report. kimi.yoshino@latimes.com jessica.garrison@latimes.com andrew.blankstein mother had an injury, mood swings Octuplets, from Ricardo DeAratanha Los Angeles Times ATTENTION: News vans line the street near Nadya home in Whittier.

Suleman says that as a child she was well-loved and was close to her parents..