A HIT MAN NEXT DOOR? MURDER-FOR-HIRE SUSPECT LED DOUBLE LIFE.

Byline: Deborah Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer

Graham Miller stood out among all the bodies beautiful at the World Gym.

He was a movie-star handsome hunk with an exotic accent and impeccable manners. Women swooned at his chiseled, 5-foot-11-inch, 190-pound physique, tawny hair and million-megawatt smile. Men admired his friendly nature and calm confidence.

A bodybuilder and part-time stuntman, the dashing South African embraced the California lifestyle as if born to it. He built a thriving career in the fitness industry and had a wide circle of friends, drove a BMW and lived well.

But he was living a double life, police say. Graham Miller was in fact Neville Vandermerwe, a 28-year-old who hid behind a swirl of shifting identities while hunted in a murder-for-hire plot.

Last week, FBI agents arrested him outside the gym on charges that he kidnapped and murdered an English businessman seven years ago.

``He's like a brother to me,'' said Brian Forster, a friend whose Told Partners realty firm leases space to World Gym on Burbank Boulevard.

``He's basically like my best friend over the last couple of years. He's outgoing, he's extremely intelligent. Just fun to be around, very caring and helpful to everyone that he's been in contact with.

``I'm just shocked. I can't believe this is true. I don't believe he's guilty,'' Forster said.

Vandermerwe's attorney, Richard Crane, did not return repeated phone calls. Like Forster, other friends professed faith in his innocence.

``I always thought of him as the perfect person who had no problems, it seemed,'' said Karla Shamis, 29, of Chatsworth, who had trained with Vandermerwe for six weeks this year.

``He looked perfect, he had lots of money, he had a perfect personality. He never lost his temper.''

As his friends and acquaintances struggle to understand how the man they knew as the model of charm and civility could be a wanted criminal, Vandermerwe is being held without bail in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown, awaiting extradition hearings.

The U.S. Attorney's Office has 60 days from the date of his arrest to prepare an extradition request on behalf of the United Kingdom.

Intercontinental odyssey

The international hunt for Vandermerwe began in April 1991 after an English accountant named Simon Law disappeared from his home in Kent County, England. Nothing but a dressing gown was missing from his home.

According to the arrest warrant prepared by the U.S. Attorney in cooperation with the Kent County Constabulary, Law had been involved in a bitter business dispute with a South African named David Jenkins, who believed Law had ``ripped him off.''

The warrant said the dispute was never resolved, and in mid-March, Law told a friend, ``I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't send a couple of blokes to sort me out.''

Law was last heard from April 22.

A red Vauxhall Astra automobile spotted at Law's home was traced to Vandermerwe and another South African, Glen Chait, who had flown to London about a week before. DNA tests showed blood encrusted on its trunk proved an almost certain match to Law. His body was never found, and Chait is now deceased.

On May 1, a person calling himself Neville Uvan Der Merle arrived in New York, the warrant states. Police said the birth date and passport number of that man match Vandermerwe's.

English police followed Vandermerwe to South Africa, but he was already gone.

His father, Willem Vandermerwe told police his son returned from England distraught, and told him: ``Someone has gone missing and I am going to get the blame for it and I've got no alibi. . . . I will be traced here so easily I have got to leave the country.''

A new life, new home

If Vandermerwe felt any such anxiety about his past, friends in California didn't detect it.

``He never acted like a guy that was hiding anything or was living a double life,'' said Bill Geiger, editor of Muscle & Fitness Magazine, who knew Vandermerwe through World Gym.

``He was kind of self-assured about himself to maybe the point of a little cocky. But probably deservedly, because he had a look that could have been a model for a magazine.''

In fact, Vandermerwe declined an offer to model for Muscle & Fitness, which Geiger said is published throughout the United States and Europe.

He was, however, highly visible at both World Gym and the former Quest Gym in Woodland Hills. Geiger said Vandermerwe also appeared on a fitness video.

His role at the gym is unclear. Forster and other gym members believed him to be general manager and said he handled complaints and other official business for the gym. Geiger said he thought him part-owner.

But a World Gym official, who declined to give his name, said Vandermerwe was merely a personal trainer. Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, confirmed that he did not appear to hold any official position at the gym.

As Vandermerwe built his new life in Los Angeles, he switched his name often and for no apparent reason.

Hiding his identity

Vandermerwe's 1990 BMW is registered to Manuel Boaventura, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. His driver's license is listed under the name Graham Manuel Miller, also known as Manuel Fernando Boaventura.

He married Christine A. Miller in Las Vegas in December under the name Manuel Boaventura, the Clark County Marriage License Bureau confirmed. Using a passport with his photo and that name, he applied for resident alien status in January 1998, the arrest warrant stated.

While police records show his birth year to be 1970, his driver's license and marriage certificate list it as 1966.

With his new wife and another woman, Vandermerwe moved into a Tarzana condominium in May 1998 under the name Graham Boaventura, property manager Russell Beesley said.

During the summer, he traveled to the East Coast for a stunt job, Shamis said.

Cornered in Los Angeles

Even seven years after Law's disappearance, however, police in England never abandoned the hunt for Vandermerwe.

Kent County constables, who had searched for Vandermerwe in his home country, learned this year that he might be in Los Angeles, near his brother, Grahame Vandermerwe, said Superintendent of Police George Rogers.

``Prior to this we'd exhausted all other avenues to look for Neville in South Africa, and we were inevitably drawn to the conclusion that he may be in Los Angeles,'' Rogers said.

They enlisted U.S. law enforcement to track him down. A Los Angeles police officer went to Grahame Vandermerwe's Hollywood home by feigning a flower delivery on Sept. 8.

A day later, the U.S. Attorney obtained a warrant for Neville Vandermerwe's arrest. On Sept. 28, the FBI arrested him without incident at World Gym.

At a court hearing the next day, Forster said his friend was calm as usual.

``He seemed pretty confident and not to be worried and in good spirits,'' Forster said. ``When the judge asked him why he was there, he didn't know why he was there.''

Rogers, the police superintendent, said the years that passed may have buttressed Vandermerwe's own sense of innocence.

``I think the passage of time may have altered people's perception of him, and he may of himself talked himself out of it,'' Rogers said. ``As time goes on, he may have convinced himself he was fine.''