Father’s Pleas Rejected : Killer Gets 16-Year Term for Slaying His Mother

A Van Nuys man described by a prosecutor as “a time bomb waiting to go off,” was sentenced Friday to 16 years to life in state prison for the March, 1983, murder of his mother.

Because the man, Bruce Lisker, was only 17 at the time of the killing, Judge Richard G. Kolostian of Van Nuys Superior Court said he will allow Lisker to spend the first few years of his sentence in the California Youth Authority.

Lisker, now 20, was found guilty Nov. 21 of second-degree murder in the brutal attack on his 66-year-old mother, Dorka, in her Sherman Oaks home. Although he first denied killing her, he later told an inmate in an adjacent jail cell that he attacked his mother after she caught him rifling her purse for money to buy drugs, according to testimony.

Multiple Wounds

An autopsy indicated that she had been struck with knives and blunt instruments at least 22 times.

Lisker’s father, Robert Lisker, pleaded with Kolostian to free his son, saying the young man has matured and has been rehabilitated during his nearly three years in juvenile hall awaiting trial.

“It’s time for him to face society and deal with himself as an adult human being,” said Robert Lisker, who has supported his son throughout the legal proceedings, despite the attack on his wife.

Lisker’s attorney, Dennis E. Mulcahy, urged Kolostian to send Lisker to the California Youth Authority for his entire sentence, with no confinement in state prison. At the authority, Lisker would be housed with other youths but would have to be released no later than his 25th birthday.

Rehabilitation Doubted

But Kolostian agreed with Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip H. Rabichow, who argued that Lisker is “a time bomb waiting to go off” and that the youth authority has little hope of rehabilitating him.

“He is somebody who is unable to handle the normal stress that we come up against,” Rabichow said.

Rabichow read from psychiatric reports, which described Lisker as demanding, manipulative, explosive, tense and hostile.

Under the sentence imposed by Kolostian, the youth authority can transfer Lisker at any time to state prison if officials determine he is no longer amenable to treatment, prosecutors said. They must transfer him by the age of 25. Most transfers, however, are made before inmates reach that age.

The earliest Lisker would be eligible for parole is 1991, Rabichow said.