MURDERER GETS DEATH IN KILLING OF OFFICER; DEFENDANT WAS ON PAROLE FOR AGOURA HILLS ROBBERY.

Byline: City News Service

Jurors recommended the death penalty Wednesday for a parolee who murdered a Manhattan Beach police officer in front of his teen-age nephew during a traffic stop.

The jury could have recommended a sentence of life in prison without parole for 33-year-old Roger Hoan Brady, who is already serving a life sentence for the murder of an Oregon nurse. He will be formally sentenced Jan. 20.

Brady was on parole after serving time for an Agoura Hills bank robbery when he shot and killed 29-year-old Officer Martin Ganz on Dec. 27, 1993.

Brady was convicted Nov. 12 of first-degree murder, plus special circumstance allegations of killing to avoid arrest and murdering a police officer.

Brady repeatedly shot Ganz following a traffic stop outside the Manhattan Village shopping center. The officer's 12-year-old nephew had been in the patrol car for a ride-along.

The boy, now 17, continues to suffer serious emotional problems as a result of seeing his uncle die, his mother said. Some of the proceeds of a trust fund established after Ganz's death have been used to pay for counseling for the youth.

Ganz, a four-year veteran officer engaged to be married, was working a holiday drunken-driving abatement patrol when he was gunned down. The former Marine Corps Reserve officer normally worked as a motorcycle traffic cop and taught DARE anti-drug sessions at local schools.

Brady, the son of former NBC television correspondent Phil Brady, was on parole at the time of the officer's slaying. He had served two years in prison on a federal bank robbery conviction, which stemmed from a holdup at an Agoura Hills bank.

Brady grew up in Topanga Canyon and attended Santa Monica College and Loyola Marymount University for several years but did not graduate. Family friends have said Brady's life went awry when he fell in with a rough crowd and developed an addiction to crack cocaine.