“American Idol” music supervisor Robin Kaye and her rock musician husband, Tom DeLuca, were returning to their $4.5-million Encino home Thursday afternoon and discovered a burglary in progress.
Though the house was well fortified, police said, the suspect managed to get in through an unlocked door. He allegedly confronted the couple when they entered.
It was not until Monday that their bodies were discovered.
The Los Angeles Police Department arrested a suspect on Tuesday — Raymond Boodarian, 22.
But that has not calmed questions about what happened.
According to Los Angeles Police Lt. Guy Golan, the department received a call at 4 p.m. the day the couple was killed and that the caller described seeing a person climbing over a fence into the property. Galon said officers went to the home, but did not get any response and saw nothing out of place, and a helicopter was flown over the property because it was difficult to access.
By then, the couple had already been killed, LAPD officials said. Boodarian locked the door after he left, police said.
“He was there for approximately half an hour,” Golan said. “When the homeowners returned back to their residence, a violent struggle ensued between them and the suspect, who was already inside their home, which resulted in the victims tragically losing their lives.” He said the couple “were ruthlessly shot multiple times.”
While crime is significantly down across Los Angeles, a series of deadly burglaries inside San Fernando Valley homes has some residents on edge.
Los Angeles Police Department officials secure the home where Robin Kaye as killed.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The deadly incident has echoes of two other killings where police did not immediately find a murder victim despite 911 calls about a crime unfolding at a particular address.
Menashe Hidra’s body was found April 26 inside his fifth-floor Valley Village apartment after an assailant broke into a neighboring unit, jumped from the balcony to his unit and attacked him, investigators said.
Three days before, neighbors had called 911 and reported hearing shouting and a struggle coming from the apartment. Officers responded to those calls, knocked on the door and left without finding anything.
Erick Escamilla, 27, was eventually charged with the killing, along with an unrelated homicide from 2022.
The same day that Hidra’s body was discovered, police found the body of Aleksandre Modebadze, who was beaten to death inside his Woodland Hills home. In that case, a woman inside the home called LAPD about 12:30 a.m. and reported three people had broken into her home and were beating her significant other before the call suddenly cut out, according to law enforcement sources. The 911 operator tried to call back multiple times without success. Shortly before 1 a.m., officers arrived at the home but no one answered the door, there was no noise coming from inside the home and the blinds were down, the sources told The Times.
Modebadze was later found by officers badly beaten with a traumatic head injury and eventually died from his injuries.
Authorities found Modebadze’s suspected killers hours after the incident.
The LAPD said they are still investigating the circumstances around Kaye and DeLuca’s deaths.
Golan said the department will also investigate why their bodies were not found earlier and whether the officers involved acted appropriately. LAPD officials said the front door of the home was not visible from the outside.
Boodarian was apprehended Tuesday without incident by LAPD and FBI taskforce officers, Golan said. The killings appeared to be random, Golan said, but investigators were looking for any connection between the suspect and DeLuca and Kaye.
The suspect has a history of alleged criminal offenses, according to court records, including charges of battery, exhibiting a deadly weapon and threatening to commit a crime with the intent to terrorize. Charges were later dismissed after hearings related to mental competency and a conservatorship.
The home where Robin Kaye has killed.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
On Monday, officers responded around 2:30 p.m. to a welfare check in the 4700 block of White Oak Avenue.
Golan said officers had been provided an electronic code that allowed them to go through a perimeter gate and get access to the front porch where they saw blood. He said the officers then broke a window and entered the house where they discovered two people inside the home.
Paramedics responded and declared the pair dead at the scene. Kaye and DeLuca, the homeowners, were both 70. After the bodies were discovered, LAPD detectives retrieved security footage that showed Boodarian entered the property last Thursday, Golan said. That footage, along with forensic evidence, allowed them to identify him and tie him to the shootings, according to Golan. A handgun was used in the shootings, but so far it has not been found, he added.
Kaye notably served as a music producer for “American Idol” from 2009 to 2023, working on nearly 300 episodes, according to IMDb. Her credits also included several “Miss Universe” TV specials, numerous NAACP Image Awards ceremonies, “The Singing Bee” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
DeLuca was a singer-songwriter best known for his 1986 album “Down to the Wire.” His most recent release was the album “Street Rock,” which came out in 2022.
In a statement shared with The Times on Tuesday, a spokesperson for “American Idol” said the team behind the singing competition was “devastated” by news of the couple’s deaths and remembered Kaye as “a cornerstone of the ‘Idol’ family.”
The statement continued: “[Kaye] was truly loved and respected by all who came in contact with her. Robin will remain in our hearts forever and we share our deepest sympathy with her family and friends during this difficult time.”
New data show homicides across Los Angeles fell by more than 20% in the first half of the year, leaving the city on pace to end 2025 with its lowest total for that crime category in nearly 60 years.
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