SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- The former roommate of Robert Gottschalk has been ordered to stand trial for slaying the late Academy Award-winning motion picture executive in a lover's quarrel.
Ronnie Chuman, 27, was bound over to Superior Court following a preliminary hearing Tuesday for arraignment Nov. 23 on a count of first-degree murder.
He was allowed to remain free on $250,000 bail.
The charge stems from the June 3 slaying of Gottschalk, 64, founder of Panavision Co., one of the movie industry's leading camera and equipment suppliers and now a subsidiary of Warner Communications.
Police said Gottschalk and Chuman, who lived together for several years in the executive's Bel-Air Estates mansion, were having a lover's quarrel over Chuman's wish to end the relationship when Gottschalk was struck with a pipe wrench and stabbed with a kitchen knife.
Chuman reportedly told investigators he struck Gottschalk in self-defense. But coroner's officials testified during the preliminary hearing that Gottschalk suffered at least 19 stab wounds and five blows to the head, while Chuman had only a bruised hand.
In 1959, Gottschalk and two others were honored by the motion picture academy for development of the Super Panavision system, a special camera process first used in the film 'Ben Hur.'
