Slain Attorney’s Colleagues Cite Field’s Danger

TUSTIN — Like many divorce attorneys, Ronald W. Weiss was no stranger to threats from spurned spouses. A few years back, a pipe bomb was tossed onto his office balcony, but it failed to blow up.

This week, Weiss, 62, who had planned to retire within the next year, was the target of another attack. This time, Roger Eugene Sandsmark of Huntington Beach burst into his law office, said “This is for you” and opened fire on the attorney representing his ex-wife in an angry divorce before taking his own life late Tuesday.

“He’s had threats in the past. All the attorneys who handle these kinds of cases get them from time to time, but he never dreamed something like this would happen to him,” said Weiss’ wife, Patricia, sobbing.

The murder-suicide left family and friends grieving for the popular attorney and part-time judge and reverberated through Orange County’s legal community, especially among Weiss’ fellow family law attorneys, who handle the most charged battles the system has to offer.

“The biggest danger is in family law, because the emotions run the highest,” said Franz Miller, president of the Orange County Bar Assn. “When love is involved, the passion seems to boil over.”

The rage in Sandsmark had erupted before. Bruce Hughes, Sandsmark’s attorney before he started representing himself, said he dropped Sandsmark as a client after several “hysteria fits.”

“He had an extremely volatile and violent temper. He would scream in a shrieking, high-pitched tone, almost to a point that you couldn’t understand him,” said Hughes. “We ultimately had to physically escort him out of the building . . . twice. He was unable to control his temper.”

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Not only was Weiss the attorney for Sandsmark’s ex-wife, but a judge had ordered the gunman to pay the lawyer $1,500 of his wife’s legal bills.

Sandsmark, a 56-year-old civilian employee at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, and ex-wife Evelyn Cabrera Cuenca Sandsmark, 51, were granted a divorce on Valentine’s Day 1996 after a marriage that barely spanned two years and produced no children, according to court records.

But instead of a simple divorce, the estranged pair continued to lash out at each other over money and property. Roger Sandsmark accused his ex-wife of income tax evasion, of stealing the last $958 from his savings account and of making off with several of his 50-pound bags of beans and rice, according to court records.

Evelyn Sandsmark accused her ex in court records of swiping her cheap jewelry, coins and wine glasses. An $800 Samsonite suitcase was the center of one heated battle, records show.

A judge ordered Roger Sandsmark, who earned more than $50,000 a year, to pay his ex-wife nearly $7,000 for mortgage payments on their Middlecoff Drive home in Huntington Beach, which Roger Sandsmark kept after the divorce, records show.

When Evelyn Sandsmark said she was only making $500 a month working as a companion to the elderly, her ex-husband was ordered to pay Weiss $1,500 in legal fees.

The most recent court action came in January, when a judge granted Evelyn Sandsmark a portion of her ex-husband’s civil service retirement benefits.

“It looks like he was upset and decided to go after the attorney,” said Tustin Police Sgt. Brent Zicarelli. Evelyn Sandsmark was located, unharmed, after the shooting, he added.

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Attorney Stuart W. Knight, who shared an office with Weiss for nearly 30 years, said that the slain lawyer had never mentioned Sandsmark as a potential threat. Standing outside his office Wednesday, Knight recalled working quietly Tuesday night when gunfire shattered the silence.

“I was in the back office working, and the first thing I heard was gunshots, about three or four gunshots,” Knight said. “Then I heard [the office secretary] screaming, ‘Ron’s been shot! Ron’s been shot!’ ”

Weiss’ secretary told him that Sandsmark said “This is for you” before he opened fire.

Knight said he grabbed a chair as a shield and made his way down the hall to the closed door to Weiss’ office.

“I looked in the window and saw two bodies,” said Knight, his voice quavering with emotion, as workers inside cleaned up the bloody scene and removed the stained carpeting.

Family law experts interviewed Wednesday said that threats are a too frequent occurrence in their line of work. Bitter parties often focus their anger on the attorneys, whom they see as driving the conflict.

“Someone once said there is no hatred like that which exists between two people who once loved each other, and it’s true,” said New York attorney Michael J. Ostrow, president of the 1,500-member American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

Sandsmark’s former attorney, Hughes, said that in the 20 years he and his wife, Lisa Hughes, have practiced family law, they have experienced many death threats.

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“Our own children have been threatened,” said the Orange attorney.

Orange family law attorney James R. Jones said that the fear of a similar tragedy caused him to take several safety precautions not too long ago.

“We moved from a building to a much more secure place,” said Jones. “There’s security downstairs, and our nameplates aren’t in the lobby, so if someone manages to get past security, they don’t know where the office is.”

Weiss was active in philanthropic causes and was volunteer counsel to the Orange County Musicians Foundation, which aided musicians without medical insurance, said Weiss’ friend Greg Topper.

“He was just such a special guy and a great friend who really cared about others,” said Topper.

Patricia Weiss sought the comfort of her five grown children and close friends Wednesday at her Laguna Niguel home. “I know that life goes on, of course, but right now I don’t see how,” she said. “I just feel so disconnected to this all. He loved being a lawyer, and he worked so hard at it. It’s just such a shame that this is the way it turned out.”

Patricia Weiss said her husband disliked the business of dissolving marriages and came home recently bragging about his day on the bench. He took one look at the forlorn couple before him and quizzed them about whether they really wanted a divorce.

Sensing that their marriage could be salvaged, Weiss left the pair alone in his chambers, Patricia Weiss said.

“Sure enough, when he returned, the couple had talked out their differences and decided to seek counseling,” Patricia Weiss said. “I told him ‘You were meant to be there.’ That’s just the kind of attorney he was.”

Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this report.