A man who claimed that his wife disappeared in the middle of the night 30 years ago was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of killing her.
Michael Clark, 57, was taken into custody at his Huntington Beach town house when he walked outside to go to work about 8:30 a.m.
Clark, wearing a green shirt and beige shorts, appeared calm and said little to the Torrance police detectives as they handcuffed him.
Clark is suspected of killing 28-year-old Carol Jeanne Lubahn, who vanished on March 31, 1981. Lubahn's credit cards and Social Security number have never been used, and her body has never been found.
"We don't have any idea where she is," Torrance police Detective Jim Wallace said. "The only reasonable explanation for her disappearance is she is dead."
The couple, graduates of North High School in Torrance, had been married 10 years, had two children and lived in the 17600 block of Cranbrook Avenue.
Police investigators released no details of what prompted Clark's arrest now, three decades after his wife's disappearance.
Wallace said, however, that the case is based partly on Clark's inconsistent statements over the years about the case.
Clark - formerly known as Michael Clark Lubahn until he dropped his last name - was booked at the Torrance jail. Prosecutors charged him with murder on Tuesday. He is expected to be arraigned today in Torrance court.
Clark for years said his wife took off in the middle of the night. He divorced her in absentia three years later.
In an interview with the Daily Breeze in 1997, Clark said he had tried to put his wife's disappearance behind him.
"The whole thing has been real strange," he said at the time. "I don't like to talk about it. So many years go by and you get it out of your mind. You hear a song on the radio and it pops back in your mind. It's weird."
In that interview, which detailed how investigators had reopened the missing person case, Clark said he and his wife had argued the night before she vanished.
"I knew something was up because she wanted to sell the house," Clark said at the time. "She wanted me to sign some papers. That's what pissed her off. She came to bed. Later, I heard the garage door go up."
Clark said he awakened at 4 or 5 in the morning and discovered his wife was not in bed.
Believing she had left to be alone for a few days, he did not call the police immediately.
He said he suspected she needed some time to herself because they had married so young, just after graduation from North High in 1972.
Clark said that as the days passed, he looked for her at El Camino College, where she was taking architecture classes.
On April 5, Clark found Lubahn's red 1979 Audi Fox parked near the Red Onion restaurant formerly on Harbor Drive in Redondo Beach.
Three days later, still believing she had run off, he reported her missing.
Torrance police always considered Lubahn's disappearance to be suspicious, but had no clues to her fate.
Some time after she vanished, Clark told police someone entered the house, removed some clothing and went through some mail.
Someone called the house on holidays, hanging up without speaking, Clark told the Daily Breeze.
"I don't know how long that lasted," he said. "I didn't think it was her. I started finally answering with her name and that didn't do anything either."
Retired Torrance police Detective Allen Tucker reopened the case in 1997. He looked into whether Lubahn ever actually left her house.
Tucker said he confronted Clark, asking him directly if he had killed his wife. Clark said no.
The detective also brought in criminalists from NecroSearch International, a Littleton, Colo.-based company that looks for clandestine graves.
Torrance police hired the criminalists to use radar in the front and back yards of the home, by that time occupied by new residents.
The criminalists used a sledlike device to scour the grounds, finding three areas that showed something could be buried below.
Detectives dug into the areas, finding construction materials and concrete, but no sign of any remains.
Neighbors said Clark, who operates a painting and wallpaper business in Orange County, moved into the town house complex near Beach Boulevard about six months ago.
Michael Clark remarried and had two other children, Garrett and Dalton. He divorced his second wife after 20 years of marriage, and lives with Garrett Clark, who is in his 20s, his son's girlfriend and their baby.
Reached at work, Garrett Clark hung up on a reporter.
Michael Clark's second wife, Kerry Dunki-Jacobs, and Lubahn's sister, Terry Meyer Samuelson, declined to comment.
Clark and Lubahn's daughter, Brandi Clark, did not return a phone message. Their son, Michael Clark Jr., could not be reached.
Michael Clark's neighbors said they had not gotten to know him since he moved in six months ago, but said `hello' when he walked his dogs.
"He was a very quiet guy," one neighbor said. "He really kept to himself."
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