The Salomon Family’s Former Home

The second I pulled the July issue of Los Angeles magazine out of my mailbox, I knew I was a goner.  Not only did the publication chronicle the city’s best fried chicken (my favorite food), but six words on the cover stopped me dead in my tracks – “Searching for the Family that Vanished.”  Resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting any work done until I devoured the article, I immediately headed over to page 64.  For the next hour or so, I remained absolutely transfixed by journalist Stacy Perman’s fascinating story about her childhood best friend/neighbor, Michelle Hoffman, who disappeared without a trace along with the rest of her family – mom Elaine Salomon, step-dad Sol Salomon and half-brother Mitchell Salomon – from their Northridge home on October 12th, 1982.  They have never been found, nor has their case ever been solved.

Piquing my interest even further was the photograph pictured below, a current image of the Salomons’ former home (taken by Michelle Thomas) that ran with the article.  As soon as my eyes caught sight of the place, I knew I had to locate it.  And yes, I get that some (or most) might find that weird.  For whatever reason, though, it is just the way my brain is wired.  I come across a mention of a site where something significant happened – good or bad – and it’s like an itch – I have to research it, pinpoint it, and ultimately see it in person.

The hunt for the Salomon residence wasn’t a tough one.  In Los Angeles magazine, Perman notes that the pad is on Lassen Street.  Further digging led me to a February 4th, 1983 Los Angeles Times article (a portion of which is pictured below) that mentioned the family lived across the street from John Nobel Junior High School.  So I opened up Google Maps and headed right on over to the stretch of Lassen situated across from Nobel (which is known as “Alfred B. Nobel Charter Middle School” in actuality).  Despite the fact that quite a few properties on the block have a very similar look to the pad pictured in LA mag, I found the right spot fairly quickly at 19232 West Lassen.  I headed out to see it shortly thereafter.

The former Salomon home is a strikingly normal dwelling on a remarkably normal street – not the sort of spot you’d expect a murder to take place, let alone a mass murder of an entire family.  But that is largely believed to be what happened on the night the Salomons vanished in October 1982.  Elaine, a stay-at-home mom, and Sol, an Israeli-born fire extinguisher salesman, moved to the sprawling 4-bedroom, 3-bath, 2,835-square-foot ranch-style abode in the late 1970s, a few years after getting married.  Stacy, who lived a few houses down, became fast friends with their teenage daughter, Michelle.  She was even set to sleepover the night of the disappearance, but, as she says, “For some reason, I had begged off.”

As she details in her fabulous article, the evening started out ordinarily enough.  After the family dined with Elaine’s parents, Murray and Margaret Malarowitz, Sol headed to a car auction with Harvey Rader, a semi-business partner of his who owned a nearby auto repair shop, while Elaine, Margaret and 15-year-old Michelle ventured out to a clothing party (which was similar to a Tupperware party) at a friend’s house.  Murray stayed home to take care of 9-year-old Mitchell.  The women returned to the Salomon pad around 10:30 p.m. and Elaine’s parents left.  Sol had not yet arrived home, which did not appear to be cause for concern to anyone.  Later that night, Elaine chatted on the phone with a friend named Barbara Levy, who told police that at around 11:30 there was a knock at the door.  Elaine answered and informed Barbara that Rader was there and that she had to hang up, but would call back the following day.  That call never came and no one has spoken with her, or any other member of the family, since.

The next night, the people who lived behind Sol and Elaine discovered that their yard was flooding and that the water was coming from the Salomons’ pool, which was overflowing.  The neighbor called Stacy and her mother to check on things.  When the two arrived at 19232 Lassen, they found the family’s cars parked in the driveway, but no one inside.  Stacy’s mother called around to a few friends and family members, but no one had seen or heard from any of the Salomons.  She then contacted the police, who entered the property and uncovered quite a cause for concern in Michelle’s bedroom.  Not only was the teen’s bed broken, but her pillowcases, sheets and comforter were missing and bloodstains were sprayed across her mattress and wall.  Oddest of all, some of her bedroom carpet had been cut out and removed.  Other than that and the waterlogged backyard, though, nothing else appeared to be amiss.  A little over a week later, two wallets belonging to the family, as well as a couple of other personal items, were found along the side of the Antelope Valley Freeway.  Though police questioned Rader, the last person to see the Salomons alive, he feigned innocence, stating that he had dropped Sol off at an Israeli restaurant after the car show (though it was later learned the restaurant was closed that particular evening) and had only popped by the family’s home to pick up a car that he had agreed to repair.  Rader instead pointed the finger at the Israeli mob, claiming that Sol was a black market arms dealer (yeah, cause that’s really believable).

Police soon learned that Rader had ties to three other missing persons – Peter and Joan Davis who disappeared from their Granada Hills home on March 17th, 1982, just seven months before the Salomons vanished, and Burbank resident Ron Adeeb who was last seen in January of that same year.  Rader’s cousin, Ashley Paulle, later implicated him as the murderer of both the Davises and the Salomons.  The killing of Peter and Joan, according to Paulle, took place during a robbery and the murder of the Salomon family was the result of an argument stemming from $20,000 that Rader owed Sol.  The path to charging the man was a long one, though, thanks largely to Paulle’s ultimate refusal to testify.  Though originally arrested in 1983, Rader was quickly released due to insufficient evidence.  He was then re-arrested in 1987, this time for passport fraud, and sent to prison for two years.  Shortly before he was set to be released, the DA finally filed charges against him for the Salomon murders and he headed to court.  His first trial, which began in May 1989, ended in a hung jury – 11 to 1 for conviction.  The second, which started on January 4th, 1990, lasted only a day before a mistrial was called.  His third culminated in a not guilty verdict on July 8th, 1992.  Sadly, justice for the Salomons has never been achieved.

The case is an incredibly sad one that echoes that of the McStays’ (a disappearance that has riveted me for almost ten years) in chilling fashion.  While exactly what happened to the Salomons remains a mystery, their former house still stands – the exterior largely unchanged from the time they occupied it – like a beacon harkening back to a simpler time when people didn’t believe things like that could happen in a neighborhood like theirs.  (The photo of the family pictured below comes from the same 1983 Los Angeles Times article I referenced earlier, which, unfortunately, is only available via a Newspapers.com subscription.)

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Salomon family’s former home is located at 19232 West Lassen Street in Northridge.

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