More Than Four Decades Later, DNA Leads To Grandmother's Accused Killer

When the elegant 79-year-old Helen Meyler was brutally murdered inside her Hollywood apartment in August 1972, neighbors and family were shocked and horrified.

Someone had entered her secured, second-floor unit in the middle of the night, sexually assaulter her and then bludgeoned her to death with a candelabra in her own bed. The culprit left behind no witnesses and no fingerprints.

Detectives grew frustrated as days, months, years and decades wore on and there were few leads in the case. But now, technology may have finally caught up with the murderer.

“I didn’t dream that 43 years later, I would be testifying on this case,” said retired Detective Chuck Gourley, who was part of the original investigation.

Known in this case as Spiderman, investigators think a man who has been in prison since the 1980s is responsible for the brutal slaying.

“The DNA evidence has gotten us to Mr. Holman and there is no doubt about that,” said Detective Richard Bengtson, a cold case investigator with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Harold Holman has been in jail since 1980, serving a 45-year sentence for a double homicide.

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Bengtson said Holman admitted that before he went to jail, he was robbing high-rise apartment buildings every other day for several years.

That's why Bengtson believes there are other victims.

“Harold Holman was not targeting a certain type of victim,” he said. “He was targeting a certain type of building.”

Holman made his criminal career as a burglar with a very unusual mode of operating — scaling the side of a building.

“It’s brave, it’s stupid and it’s crafty,” said Bengtson. “He would jump and pull himself up ... it is an incredible feat of strength.”

In 1975, LAPD detectives on stake out watched in near disbelief as Holman climbed up to the fourth floor balcony, then the fifth, sixth, and continued pulling himself all the way up to the twelfth floor of a building, later described in court documents.

“It’s almost unhuman,” Bengston said.

In a jailhouse interview, Holman told Bengtson he would take cash, jewelry and fur coats.

“And then comes right back down the way he went up,” Bengston said.

During a recent court appearance, the nearly 70-year-old Holman attempted to fire his public defender.

“She has been bullshitting and lying to me and the court,” he argued. He argued with the judge, and said he wanted to defend himself.

Helen Meyler’s granddaughters have attended some of the court hearings.

“When I saw him in the courtroom, I just felt really sorry for him,” Nikki Meyler Ramos said.

But the family said they keep the good memories of their grandmother, before the horror.

“We didn’t call her grandma, we called her mimi,” Nikki remembered. “Always happy and smiling.”

“You can tell by her wrinkles — they are all happy. She smiled a lot,” said namesake granddaughter Helen Meyler Ramos.

“She spent her whole life giving. She worked for orphanages. She worked for hospitals,” Nikki recalled.

Bengtson said he gets nervous when he makes the call to families, letting them know a cold case may finally be solved.

“At first it’s really happy emotions, then you see the sadness come back a little bit because they start missing their family member,” he said.

The last of LAPD’s original Cold Case Unit detectives, Bengtson says this work is an honor.

“I get to speak for the victim — when the victim can’t speak anymore because they've been silenced by some evil monster,” he said.
 

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