A 73-year-old former businessman, Richard Harry Wall Sr., has been extradited from Montenegro to the United States to face murder charges for allegedly orchestrating the execution-style killings of a lawyer and a former employee in Southern California. The announcement was made Monday by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
Wall is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles County Superior Court on July 1, where he will be charged with two counts of murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, along with special allegations. Inmate records indicate he was booked into Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles County on Friday.
Prosecutors allege Wall masterminded the 2009 slaying of attorney Jeffrey Tidus, who was gunned down outside his home in Rolling Hills Estates. Tidus had recently won a $1.7 million settlement against a close friend of Wall.
Two years earlier, Tidus had secured a $2.5 million verdict against Wall's business for fraudulent activity.
Wall is also accused of ordering the 2011 murder of 35-year-old Juan Gabriel Mendez-Ramirez, a former employee who sued Wall for unpaid overtime and was awarded $300,000 by a jury. Mendez-Ramirez was shot and killed in front of his two children at his Whittier apartment.
By the time investigators identified Wall as a suspect in 2017, he had relocated to a $2 million home along the Adriatic Sea in Montenegro, a country without an extradition treaty with the United States. In a phone interview with the Daily Breeze in January 2020, Wall denied the allegations, claiming he moved to Montenegro because he sold his company and wanted a change of scenery.
According to a criminal complaint, Wall allegedly provided photos and addresses of both victims to co-conspirators and paid them to carry out the murders. In Tidus's case, the gunman shot him once in the back of the head.
For Mendez-Ramirez, the gunman knocked on his door and shot him when he answered, then pursued him down a stairwell and continued firing.
Details of Wall's extradition from Montenegro to Los Angeles County have not been disclosed.
Wall is also a suspect in a third killing in Las Vegas. On May 20, 2008, the body of David James "DJ" Vargas, 53, was found inside his home near the Las Vegas Strip.
Vargas, who was self-employed and trying to start an escort and limo service, owed Wall at least $100,000. The two men had a falling out over the debt, and Las Vegas police noted similarities between Vargas's death and the two that followed.
Wall has not been charged in that case.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a release, "When Richard Wall Senior lost lawsuits, instead of appealing the verdicts, he allegedly decided to kill those who opposed him in court. These were vicious and callous murders that we believe came at the behest of Mr.
Wall who thought killing two people would end his legal problems. Such allegedly ruthless decision-making has landed Mr.
Wall in far worse shape now."
Wall appeared in court Monday and is scheduled to be arraigned July 1. He faces life in prison if convicted.