Israel’s Supreme Court has rejected the appeals of two Israelis convicted of the 1987 “gun for hire” contract murder of a wealthy American couple near Los Angeles.
But the charge against one of them, Nadav Nakan, was reduced from murder to manslaughter.
Nakan and Yair Orr, both originally from Kibbutz Alonim in the Jezreel Valley, were convicted in 1991 of murdering Jack and Carmen Hively of Santa Barbara.
According to an indictment supplied by the California authorities, the two Israelis were paid to commit the murders by Charles Le Gros, the Hivelys’ son-in-law.
Le Gros apparently wanted to get his hands on the large sum of money his wife would inherit when the Hivelys died.
Le Gros recruited Orr, who then brought in his childhood friend, Nakan, to help him.
The United States sought to extradite the two men and try them in America, but Israeli law forbids extradition if the suspects were Israeli citizens at the time of the crime.
Orr and Nakan were thus convicted of the crime in Tel Aviv District Court, with the help of evidence supplied by U.S. law-enforcement sources.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
