LOS ANGELES (KNX) — A man charged in the slaying of an Irvine research scientist while camping with his two young children in Malibu Creek State Park was ordered removed from court Wednesday following an outburst, according to reports.
During a hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo told defendant Anthony Rauda he did not have the authority to file motions on his own behalf, including a request for change of venue, because he has a defense attorney and was not representing himself pro se.
“The court will not entertain any of these motions at this time,” Olmedo said, prompting an outburst from Rauda reportedly laden with expletives.
Rauda, 45, will go on trial in September on a charge that he killed 35-year-old Allergan scientist Tristan Thomas Beaudette. Beaudette was shot shortly before 5 a.m. on June 22, 2018, while sharing a tent with his daughters, then two and four years old.
Both girls escaped injury.
The murder served as the source material for the first season of the popular true-crime podcast Lost Hills, released last year.
Rauda faces 10 counts of attempted murder, with victims including Beaudette’s two daughters, along with five counts of second-degree commercial burglary dating back three years.
Rauda was originally charged in Jan. 2019, then indicted in October by an L.A. grand jury. Court proceedings were suspended after attorneys raised concerns about his mental competence, but were restarted last November following an evaluation.
“You’ll be seeing me before that,” Rauda said when told of the September court date on Wednesday. “You sure will.”
Olmeda ordered Rauda be removed from the downtown L.A. courtroom after the subsequent outburst. Rauda was physically restrained by the judge’s order earlier in hearing due to his “unpredictably violent behavior.”
Rauda could face life in prison if convicted. He also has a series of weapons-related convictions on his record dating back to 2006.
The killing of Beaudette was not Rauda’s first attack carried out in the Malibu Creek area. In 2016, prosecutors alleged he wounded a man sleeping in a hammock in the park. He also allegedly fired into the sleeping area of a vehicle less than a week later.
He was finally apprehended in 2018 after a series of manhunts in the area for an armed transient suspected of multiple break-ins in the Calabasas area.
After he was removed from the courtroom, a May 3 pretrial hearing was set.
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