Arrests Stun Poly Students : Slaying: Classmates and school officials tell of rumors and suspected activities involving a secret club. They describe one murder suspect as a bright but quiet person.

The principal of Long Beach’s Polytechnic High School and many students were reeling Saturday over the news that members of a militaristic secret society on campus have been accused in the execution-style slaying of a fellow student.

Los Angeles police arrested four students Friday in the February murder of Alexander Giraldo, whose killers beat, stabbed and strangled him, then threw his body over an oceanside cliff in San Pedro. The 16-year-old senior apparently violated the club’s loyalty oath by cooperating with police in a car burglary investigation, police said.

“I’m in a state of shock. Anytime something like that happens you can’t believe that,” Principal H.J. Green said. “We hear rumors all the time about clubs. We thought that because the students had been investigated . . . that it was over.”

Police had questioned the students about Giraldo’s death shortly after his body was discovered. “The club was not a part of school,” he added. “We didn’t know who was in the club, except by rumor.”

Investigators allege that the secret society, known as the Ace of Spades, was formed by students who belonged to the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Program.

Mike F. Carpenter, an ROTC instructor, said the Ace of Spades included no current ROTC students, but he acknowledged that Giraldo belonged to the ROTC program until last fall. “Alex was dropped because he didn’t participate” in ROTC activities, Carpenter said.

Carpenter added that one former ROTC student was thought to have belonged to the Ace of Spades but that administrators expelled the student last fall for stealing and other disciplinary problems.

The Ace of Spades was a shadowy group made up of “the type of kids that didn’t go to class,” Carpenter said. “They were doing graffiti at the school. They were a group of kids trying to do secret things.” He said one club member had been caught bringing ammunition to campus.

Green said someone had spray-painted the group’s name on a gym wall during the first day of classes last fall, and a groundskeeper said the Ace of Spades frequently tagged school property with spade drawings.

One sophomore said the Ace of Spades consisted of about 15 students who mostly socialized among themselves. An ROTC student said friends warned her to stay away from the clannish group because “they were nothing but trouble.”

Many students were especially shocked by the arrest of Schuyler MacPherson, an 18-year-old senior. Police have not released the names of the other suspects because they are minors. MacPherson is known on campus as a bright but quiet person whose proud parents provided him with a nice car. Police said he drove a late-model Mitsubishi sports car.

“This is the least person you would suspect of doing that. This is the shock of a lifetime,” senior Stephanie Schlose said. “I’ve known him for a long time, at least five years. He seemed like a shy, quiet kind of guy.”

Some students said they had jokingly addressed MacPherson as “murderer” when police initially questioned him about the death of his friend Giraldo.

Mary Riddick, a guidance counselor, described MacPherson as college material. But she said he was a student who wanted to go into business without going to college. “I couldn’t get him to take college prep classes, as hard as I tried,” she said.

MacPherson seemed to come from the kind of family whose children do not get into trouble, Riddick said. “He didn’t need or want counseling. . . . He had interests. It doesn’t add up.”

Friends described Giraldo as an avid skateboarder and well-liked teen-ager eager to be accepted by peers. “Somebody said his death was gang-related,” classmate Melissa Boucher said, “but I don’t believe it because he was not that kind of person.”

For a while, Giraldo was very involved in ROTC, frequently wearing his uniform to school, friends said. More recently, he had told his friends that he wanted to go to USC and study psychiatry. He was an average student, school officials said.

If Giraldo was involved in the club, he led a double life, guidance counselor Barry Baker said. A girl who used to date Giraldo was equally surprised that police allege that he participated in car thefts or war games.

Police said Ace of Spades members enjoyed military war games and fired at one another with pistols loaded with paint balls. Police allege that the games progressed to mock military missions, including car thefts and the slaying.

“I couldn’t picture him doing what police said he did,” said the girl, who asked to remain anonymous. “He called me two days before he was killed. He was happy. He was in a good mood.

“He was a sweet guy. He didn’t deserve what happened at all.”