Neighbors Grappling With Connection

FOUNTAIN VALLEY — James and Margaret Wengert were fixtures in this quiet neighborhood for nearly 24 years. Suddenly, in January, they were gone, leaving neighbors baffled.

The home they carefully landscaped with rose bushes and wild tropical trees, whose roof they retiled just a few years ago, now stands abandoned, with piles of leaflets from solicitors accumulating on the front steps.

“We didn’t know they were moving until the day they moved out,” said Diane Garb, 41, who lived across the street from the Wengerts for two years.

On Tuesday, the residents of Sioux River Circle learned of the strange connection between their former neighbors and the slaying of Jane Carver nearly a year ago. A source identified Margaret “Peggy” Wengert, not Carver, as the intended target of a hit man allegedly associated with a Huntington Beach finance company to whom the Wengerts owed as much as $400,000.

The couple moved to San Clemente, where James Wengert was shot in the face last month outside his office.

But one neighbor said the Wengerts’ problems may have gone unnoticed until after they left the neighborhood.

Annette Huffman recalled delivering a telephone message from a creditor to the Wengerts nearly eight years ago. “I told them: ‘These people really want you to call them,’ ” Huffman said. “At the time I didn’t think anything of it. I was so naive, and I was really embarrassed later.”

Aside from the thin physique that Carver and Peggy Wengert shared, there was little physical resemblance to confuse the attacker, neighbors said. Wengert was in her late 40s, had brown hair and did not jog, neighbors said. Carver, an avid jogger, was blond and in her 40s.

Wengert “walked her dog,” Huffman said. “She wasn’t a jogging type person.”

About a mile north on McCabe River Circle, Carver’s neighbors said that the fear sparked by her killing has subsided somewhat, but they are still on guard.

“This was a senseless killing,” said John Nguyen, a seven-year resident of Carver’s neighborhood. “We have been keeping our doors locked and have not been speaking to strangers or to people that looked like” the suspect described by police.

Carver’s neighbors played a pivotal role in helping catch the suspect, Leonard Owen Mundy, authorities said. For months, a core of 150 volunteers worked relentlessly to publicize Carver’s slaying.

Jacki Gardner, a neighbor and friend of Carver for 18 years, said volunteers distributed more than 200,000 fliers bearing a sketch of the suspected assailant, sending them out in bulk mailings and dispatching them across the country with flight attendants who had worked with Carver.

Fountain Valley Det. Kim Brown called the volunteers an “incredible network” that played a key role in the investigation. Last November, volunteers hauled their computers into the police station to crank out mailing labels for the fliers.

“We feel like we can all kind of sleep at night now,” said Gardner, who attended Tuesday’s news conference wearing a lapel button of Carver’s smiling face. “It’s a real relief to know that it’s over.”

Kaiser Permanente and United Airlines are sponsoring a community fund-raising run for victims of violent crime on June 10 to commemorate Carver’s death. “Janie’s Run for Youth Scholarships,” will be held at Mile Square Regional Park.

At the park, a few yards away from the site where Carver was killed, people expressed their fear and frustration over violent crime Tuesday afternoon.

“You never know anymore,” said Tina Giese, who was at the park Tuesday afternoon with her mother, Vera, and her two young children. “I used to come and jog here, but because of things like [the shooting], you stop coming. If you do anything in a routine [manner], it gets scary. It makes you think you can’t go out in the day anymore.”