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Stahl could have divorced his wife--they had a prenuptial agreement--but he decided to kill her. He was a lonely man in a big hurry--mortality was staring him in the face. Stahl was 57 years old, 5 ft. 11 in. and 180 lbs.; he exercised daily and ate a healthy diet. But he had had triple-bypass surgery at 37, numerous angioplasty treatments since then and, in July 1999, a quadruple-bypass operation that doctors had given him only a 20% chance of surviving. His heart was more congested than the Los Angeles freeway system. "Ken Stahl was going to die very soon. He wanted things to happen quickly," says Villalobos.
Divorced twice already, Stahl had had a string of affairs. Carolyn Oppy's sister, Linda Dubay, says Stahl, with a middling career as an anesthesiologist, was unable to live up to his family's high expectations for him. His father was a respected surgeon and CEO of a hospital. "Ken needed the ego boosts of his affairs--usually with divorced nurses, single mothers, needy individuals." Vasco fit the profile. Oppy was in the way.
Villalobos and Meaney say Vasco introduced Stahl to a man she called Tony Satton, who lived in her condominium complex in Anaheim. The two men allegedly made a deal: some $30,000 for Satton to pull the trigger, feign a robbery attempt or create another diversion and disappear. What Stahl didn't know was that Satton as well was having an affair with Vasco. What Vasco didn't know was that Satton's real name was Dennis Earl Godley of Bellarthur, N.C., that he had a criminal record longer than her arm, that he was on the run from police in two states already and that he had a history of being obsessively jealous of his women. The deceptions were piling on thick and fast.
The night of the murders, Carolyn Oppy was looking forward to dinner with her husband to celebrate her 44th birthday. "She called that day and told us Ken had a big surprise for her. She sounded hopeful," says Dubay. Oppy loved her work as an optometrist, was popular with the patients, even getting the cranky ones to loosen up and laugh with her. The one person she couldn't get through to was her husband, whose affairs saddened and angered her at the same time. She had considered divorce, but in the end, she held on, hoping Stahl would change. She had even taken several weeks off that summer to care for her husband after his quadruple-bypass surgery. "She had put up with so much and got used to it," says Dubay. "Somehow the unknown is more scary than the known."
Sometimes the known is the unknown. On the way back from dinner, Stahl drove up Ortega Highway, which runs from San Juan Capistrano east over the hills to Riverside, about 30 miles from their home. The detectives think Godley, a.k.a. Satton, was waiting for the car, a silver 1996 Dodge Stratus. They theorize that Godley decided to kill both people in the car, either to eliminate all witnesses or because he was jealous of Stahl's affair with Vasco--or both. "Ken didn't see it coming," says Villalobos. "He thought he was taking care of her, and then--boom!--he got his."