Nothing seemed askew with Ted Loseff on the morning and early afternoon of February 23, 1974. He had a haircut, ate two roast beef sandwiches for lunch, and had phoned a friend, saying he was watching a ball game and relaxing at home. The respected forty-one-year-old Los Angeles Orthopedic Surgeon seemed to be enjoying the start of the weekend.

That evening, however, Ted Loseff was found dead. He was declared to have taken his life, but after over a decade of his mother’s relentless efforts to have his case reopened, the cause of death was changed to undetermined, with the coroner stating the evidence suggested homicide but could not exclude suicide.

By then, the likely only person who could have provided definitive answers was also deceased.

Ted Loseff

Bea Burrows, Ted’s housekeeper, arrived at his home around 10:00 a.m. Ted told her he and his thirty-six-year-old wife Wilda were getting a divorce and she would no longer be staying at the house.

The news did not come as a shock.  The couple’s two tumultuous years of marriage had been marked by frequent fights, both verbal and physical, generally resulting from Wilda’s worsening alcoholism. Ted also believed she had had several affairs.

Ted And Wilda

Wilda came to the house at approximately 2:00 and went upstairs to talk to Ted. About a half hour later, Bea heard their arguing escalate into screaming and yelling, culminating with Ted dragging Wilda down the stairs as she bellowed hysterically that he had a gun. Ted denied so and Bea did not see any weapon.

After things cooled down, Ted paid Bea for her work. While driving home, she encountered Wilda walking on the street and stopped to talk to her. Wilda, still visibly distraught, still insisted that Ted had a gun. Bea took Wilda to her home and called the police. Bea was told they could not investigate unless she had actually seen a gun.

By her estimation, Bea then tried to call Ted at least twenty times over the following five hours, getting a busy signal each time before finally getting through shortly after 8:00 p.m., only to receive no answer. She then again phoned the police, and they agreed to go to the home.

Wilda and Bea returned to Ted’s home where they, along with his friend Edward Jay, met the police. Wilda repeated her claim that Ted had a gun and was acting erratically.

Police entered the home where their calls to Ted went unanswered. At Wilda’s suggestion, they then looked in the garage where they found Ted dead in the driver’s seat of his Cadillac. The engine was running and a hose connected to a tailpipe fed into the interior through a window.

Despite finding it odd that Wilda had suggested searching for Ted in the garage, investigators believed the scene showed a clear case of suicide. Those sentiments were bolstered upon finding a note written on a shirt cardboard in the home’s upstairs master bedroom. Confirmed to be in Ted’s handwriting, it read “Wilda– All I ever asked for was a moment of compassion and understanding. I love you. T.”

Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguichi ruled Ted Loseff had killed himself via carbon monoxide poisoning. An autopsy was not performed, the car was not processed for fingerprints, and no blood samples were taken.

Ted Is Found Dead

Zel Loseff did not believe her son had committed suicide. Ted had always parked his car in his driveway because, for as long as Zel could remember, his garage had been packed with boat equipment and boxes. Because Ted was recovering from recent back surgery, it would have been strenuous for him to move many of the heavy items as well as to have opened the damaged driveway gates.

Bea was also bothered by several findings. When she had last seen him several hours before his death, Ted was wearing brown pants and a mustard colored shirt, but when found dead, he was clad in a white dress shirt with French cuffs and gray pants upon which no urine of fecal matter were found. From her seventeen years of working at a hospital, she knew excrement is commonly found on deceased people. Furthermore, Ted’s colorization was not like that of other carbon monoxide victims she had seen.

The supposed suicide note also bothered Bea, as she had always used a hanger instead of a shirt cardboard after ironing Ted’s shirts. In addition, a large amount of money she had seen in the upstairs bedroom that morning had disappeared by evening and was not found on Ted, nor was the alleged gun Wilda had said he had.

Despite her suspicions, Bea continued working for Wilda, who resumed living in the house after Ted’s death. While cleaning the guest room one week afterwards, Bea found vomit stains on a bedspread. Wilda said it was from her dogs who had been sick the evening before, but they had been in a kennel at the time.

Both Zel and Bea’s suspicions were further aroused by Wilda’s blasé attitude following Ted’s death and her only putting a headstone on his grave after several months of pestering.

Zel Loseff

In 1978, four years after her son’s death. Zel Loseff won a court order to have Ted’s body exhumed for an autopsy. Forensic Pathologist Dr. Irving Root determined Ted had suffered a violent vomiting spell shortly before his demise and that vomitus would have been expected to be found on his clothing and face and on the inside of his car. The finding of none led Root to believe the vomiting occurred elsewhere and while Ted was wearing different clothes. The brown pants and mustard colored shirt which Bea had seen Ted wearing several hours before his death were not found among his belongings afterwards. A vomit-stained bedspread had been found in a back room near the garage on the evening of Ted’s death, but it had not been seized because police did not suspect foul play.

Dr. Root also determined that Ted had been involved in a struggle and that the most likely cause of death was cyanide poisoning. Four other forensic experts hired by Zel did not agree with certainty on cyanide as the cause of death, but they did concur that the suicide ruling was called into question.

Upon her first entering the house after Ted’s death, Bea saw several dirty glasses in the kitchen sink along with four empty beer cans and cigarettes. Ted rarely drank and did not smoke, while Wilda, in contrast, did much of both. Some of the cigarettes were confirmed brands smoked by several of her friends, some of whom Zel believed Wilda had enlisted to kill her son.

After Wilda and Bea left the house, Zel believes multiple assailants entered Ted’s home through the unlocked back door, overpowered him and forced him to drink the poison causing the vomiting, and then changed his clothes and took the telephone off the hook.

Once Ted was unconscious, Zel theorized the assailants cleared space in the garage and opened the gates. Then they drove the car into the garage and put the incapacitated Ted inside it. They then closed the garage door, connected the hose to the tailpipe, fed the gas through the window, exited the garage, and closed the gate.

Several people passing by Ted’s home after his estimated time of death had reported seeing movement inside. Zel believes her son’s killers had gone back into the house to clean up the scene and hang up the phone to signal Wilda that the task was completed.

Zel’s Theory

 

The investigation into Ted Loseff’s death was reopened in March 1982. An acquaintance told authorities the purported suicide note had in fact been written by Ted after an argument with Wilda, but that it was penned two years before his death.

In 1985, Los Angeles County Coroner Ronald Kornblum ruled Ted Loseff’s death as undetermined, showing suggestions of homicide by carbon monoxide poisoning from exposure to exhaust fumes from his own car, but not precluding suicide.

Wilda remarried after Ted’s death and moved to the eastern United States. On May 1, 1983, while the investigation into Ted’s death was ongoing, she died of a drug and alcohol overdose at age forty-five. If she had solicited anyone to murder her first husband, she never provided any clues.

Wilda Dies

At Ted’s insistence, Wilda had signed a prenuptial agreement, stipulating that she would get no property if the marriage ended in divorce. Edward Jay says Wilda had wanted to divorce Ted but had changed her mind shortly before his death, likely having recalled the terms of the pre-nup.

 The Wedded Bliss Was Short

A Los Angeles Times  article states, without elaborating, that Ted Loseff had attempted suicide in 1972, two years before his death.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/152031950/theodore_allan-loseff

Young Ted

SOURCES:

• Los Angeles Times
• Unsolved Mysteries