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Long Beach man accused of killing ex-girlfriend in Aliso Viejo spa bombing once again on trial

June 29, 2023

A Long Beach man accused of building a homemade bomb that killed his ex-girlfriend, injured two other women and obliterated an Aliso Viejo day spa is once again on trial, less than a year after a different jury was unable to decide whether he was guilty of using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death.

As Stephen Beal’s second trial got underway on Wednesday morning at the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, the opposing attorneys once again painted contrasting portraits of Beal as either a jilted lover turned deadly bomber or an innocent man whose hobby quickly made him the target of investigators who were under pressure to solve the high-profile killing of 48-year-old Ildiko Krajnyak.

A Hungarian-native who came to the United States in the 90s, Krajnyak spent years working in the beauty industry before saving up enough money to open her own day spa. On May 15, 2018, Krajnyak was opening a small cardboard box while chatting with a mother and daughter who had just gotten facials at the salon for an upcoming family wedding when the package suddenly exploded. The daughter would later recall a deafening “boom,” a flash of “hot light” and a “massive wave of heat and pressure” that knocked her off her feet, followed by the darkness of a room enveloped with black smoke.

The daughter was able to find her mother in the debris, but Krajnyak was immediately killed in the blast. The force of the explosion “vaporized” the portions of Krajnyak’s body closest to the package, while tearing apart half the structure that housed the spa, collapsing the ceiling and leaving body parts and rubble around the surrounding area.

“A bomb went off,” Assistant United States Attorney Annamartine Salick told jurors in her opening statement. “Ildiko’s spa was destroyed, the business Ildiko poured her heart and soul into, gone in an instant… Ildiko was found in pieces.”

It would take weeks of painstaking work by specialized federal law enforcement teams aided by technicians at the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Virgina to fully process the remnants of the spa. But Beal — who had both personal and business ties to Krajnyak — quickly emerged as the prime suspect in the bombing.

The two had a “tumultuous” dating relationship after meeting online in 2016, and were co-owners of the spa. Beal also had more than 130 pounds of what law enforcement officials would describe as “explosives precursors” at his home, which he said was for his model-rocket hobby.

Prosecutors have described Beal, now 64, as the only person with the means, motive and opportunity to kill Krajnyak. He had learned that Krajnyak was with another man during a recent trip to Hungary, prosecutors said, had used his chemical and electronics experience to craft the bomb and his keys to the spa and knowledge of when Krajnyak was out of the country in order to plant the explosive package at the business.

“The defendant became an expert in mixing highly-volatile explosive chemicals and building electric circuits and fusing systems,” Salick said. “The defendant knew how to make things explode. And he used those skills — over decades of making rockets and pyrotechnics — to build the bomb that exploded on May 15.”

Investigators would later find receipts and surveillance footage they say show Beal purchasing a battery that appears to match the one believed to have served as a power source for the bomb, as well as a box that one of the women who survived the explosion identified as looking like the package that held the explosives.

Beal’s attorney, Meghan Blanco, denied that Beal had any involvement in the bomb or Krajnyak’s death. The defense attorney said it was Beal himself who contacted investigators the day of the explosion, and who allowed them to search his Long Beach home where the chemicals cited by authorities were discovered. Beal’s attorneys noted the containers holding the chemicals were covered in dust, since Beal had stopped pursing his model-rocket hobby when his children grew up and left his home.

“They turned immediately to Stephen Beal, who made himself a suspect in the case,” Blanco said “Now, Mr. Beal didn’t make himself a suspect because he had done anything wrong or because he had done anything guilty or illegal. Mr. Beal made himself a suspect because he reached out to law enforcement. He called them. He invited them over to his house”

The defense attorney argued that investigators ignored other potential suspects. She told jurors that an electrician who was working as a maintenance man at the building where the spa was located had sent unwanted and “uncomfortable” texts to Krajnyak, that the owner of the building — who has since died — had taken out an insurance policy months earlier that covered the building in the event of a bombing and that a married former lover of Krajnyak’s had military experience and a wife who had repeatedly confronted Krajnyak over her affair with the husband.

Last August, Beal’s first trial ended with the jury split 9 to 3 in favor of his guilt, leading U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton to declare a mistrial. Speaking to attorneys outside the courtroom, one of the jurors said she voted not guilty after agreeing with the defense that investigators had shown “tunnel vision” by focusing on Beal.

Beal’s current trial is expected to last six weeks, slightly shorter than his two-month-long initial trial.

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