Opinion ID: 1427135
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: People's case.

Text: Toni Esparza, then 15, and Joanne Murchland, then 14, testified they were at Huntington Beach on June 19, 1979. A man they both identified as defendant asked to take their pictures for a bikini photo contest. He also offered them a ride and marijuana, and he tried to get their phone numbers. They contacted police when they saw defendant's picture on television news. Lorrie Werts, 15, told of a similar experience with defendant at the beach on June 20. Police had found her photo in the Seattle storage locker. Her narrative was confirmed in large part by her companion, Patty Elmendorf. Several other people testified to seeing defendant at the beach in early to mid-afternoon on the 20th, though details of clothing and appearance varied. In court, Bridgett Wilvert positively identified defendant as the photographer she and Robin had met at the beach on June 20 between 2 and 3 p.m. Jackye Young confirmed that identification. According to Bridgett, she and Robin returned to Bridgett's apartment about 3:10. Robin said she had to hurry to a 4 p.m. ballet lesson; she was excited because she was moving up to toe. Bridgett offered Robin her bike, a yellow Schwinn 24-inch model with turned-up handlebars, which was in the laundry room of the apartment building. Robin left dressed lightly in a red T-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes. The bike has been missing since. Marianne Frazer, Robin's mother, and Beverly Fleming, who owned a children's dance studio in Huntington Beach, confirmed that Robin was due but never arrived at a 5 p.m. dance class. She had taken ballet and gymnastics since she was four and was serious about her dancing. After her mother's recent accident, Robin had arranged to answer phones at the studio to pay for her classes. Both Bridgett and Fleming said Robin would never miss a class from disinterest. Dana Crappa, a forest service worker, presented key evidence. She was a member of the spraying crew which had discovered Robin's body on July 2. She had been uncooperative in police interviews and evasive at the preliminary hearing. Much of what she said at trial was new, and she displayed great distress on the witness stand. Crappa had previously admitted a near-collision with a distinctive Datsun like defendant's on the evening of June 21. The Datsun was parked at Rendezvous Turnout, less than a mile from the crime scene. Beside the car was a man wearing levis and a stained T-shirt. The car appeared to have dirt kicked up under the tires. Crappa confirmed that information, but now revealed under persistent questioning that she had seen the same Datsun on the previous evening, June 20, between 5 and 5:30 p.m. The June 20 encounter took place at Marker 11, a turnout less than 300 feet from where Robin's body was found. Crappa said two people with their backs to her, a man and a small girl with long blonde hair, were walking up the ravine away from the road. The man, wearing levis and a T-shirt, was sort of forcefully steering the girl up the gully. Crappa could not see whether he was touching her or holding a weapon. The man turned and looked straight through Crappa, who thought something might be wrong but continued on. Crappa had testified at the preliminary hearing that the June 21 encounter occurred between 10 and 10:30 p.m. Having since retraced her activities for that day, she now thought it was more like 8 to 8:30. [2] In court, Crappa declared she was almost certain, but not 100 percent positive, that defendant was the man she had seen on both occasions. Crappa further testified for the first time that she returned to Marker 11 between 7 and 7:30 on the evening of June 25 and walked up the ravine with a flashlight. With extreme difficulty, the prosecutor elicited that she had discovered a body. Part of the face was gone, and the corpse, apparently unclothed, was pretty cut up. The hands and feet were missing, but Crappa could not say whether they had been cut off and could not remember whether the legs were hacked up. The head was next to the body, and she could not tell if it was severed. Nearby she saw a blue and yellow tennis shoe and what looked like shorts and a T-shirt. She found no knife. There were tire tracks in the area. Horrified, she left quickly and told no one. Four days later, Crappa recounted, she was part of a spraying crew which included William Poepke. Poepke came upon a pile of bones in the same area. Thinking the remains were those of a deer, he picked up a bone and tossed it at her. She knew it was no deer. That night, said Crappa, she visited the scene again. It was dark, but, closer to the roadway, her flashlight beam caught a shiny object. She could not say for sure that it was a knife but believed now that it was. She saw the body, drawn out and skeletal by then, the right arm missing. She found some blonde hair. The shorts, T-shirt, and tennis shoe were still there. Three days later Poepke discovered the skull, and the authorities were called. Marianne Frazer, Robin's mother, confirmed that the earrings recovered from defendant's Seattle storage locker looked like a pair Robin may have borrowed from her. Frazer explained that after a dangle was lost from one of the pair, she pinched off the other dangle with nail clippers so the earrings would match. Robin sometimes borrowed them, and they had been missing since her disappearance. According to Frazer, the recovered earrings closely resembled her pair after the dangles had been removed, and a blemish on one of the earrings looked like the pinch mark left by her clippers. Laboratory tests to discover whether Frazer's clippers caused the blemish were inconclusive. Two Orange County jail inmates appeared as prosecution witnesses. Robert Dove testified he overheard a conversation between defendant and another inmate, Michael Herrera. According to Dove, defendant denied stabbing Robin, saying he had only slapped her unconscious. Later, defendant told Dove himself that nobody seen me take her. They would never convict him, said defendant, without the film and the bike, and they would not find the bike. In a conversation about photography, defendant said vaguely that he liked to go to a place in the mountains near water towers where one could see city lights. He also mentioned Big Tujunga Canyon. (The death scene was in Santa Anita Canyon, not Big Tujunga, but it was fairly near water towers, and city lights were visible from the road nearby.) Defendant said the victim's friend  apparently Bridgett Wilvert  had been unable to identify him even under hypnosis. Herrera testified that defendant said he had seen a lawyer who thought the case was weak because it's no crime to take pictures at the beach, and there was no positive identification anyway. Defendant said he had gotten Robin into his car by offering to pay her for magazine photos, which wouldn't take long. [3] In any event, he told her he would drop her at her appointment. He had trouble getting the bicycle into the car. Once underway, he locked Robin's door. Defendant was evasive about the route he took, but talked about the Pacific Coast Highway and said the scenery was nice. Herrera indicated that he thinks Robin was worried, scared and wanted to get out of the car. At some point, according to Herrera, defendant asked her if she had ever posed nude. She was crying, and defendant started slapping the shit out of her; it was a weird situation and a trip. Robin became unconscious, and defendant thought about taking her to some mountains; Herrera remembered the name San Gabriel. Defendant finally decided to leave her where she was. Later he abandoned the bike behind a Thrifty Drug Store or Thriftimart or some kind of thrift store, and he believed the police would not find it. As in Dove's version, defendant denied shooting or stabbing Robin. The missing bicycle was never found. However, the manager of a charity thrift store in El Monte testified he had found a yellow Schwinn bicycle with turned-up handlebars behind the store during July and sold it. The bike was in unusually good condition for a charity donation. Over defendant's strenuous objection, evidence of his conduct on prior occasions was introduced. It tended to show that defendant had a history of enticing young girls into his car, taking them to isolated places, and subjecting them to forced sexual activity and violence. This evidence is discussed in greater detail below. A deputy coroner testified that Robin's remains had been chewed by animals, which accounted for much of their scattered and mutilated state when found on July 2. However, a forensic dentist opined that chips in the lower teeth were very likely produced by forceful contact with a blunt object, whether before or after death. At the conclusion of the prosecution's case, defendant moved for acquittal. (§ 1118.1.) The motion was denied, except that an allegation of child molestation as a special circumstance was stricken from the information.