College Student Denies He Beat Girlfriend to Death

A college student charged with beating his girlfriend to death while the two jogged in the Oakland Hills denied the killing under questioning by his defense attorney.

Bradley Page, 25, charged with the slaying of Roberta (Bibbi) Lee, 21, in November, 1984, replied “no” when asked Monday if he recalled hitting or harming Lee after they set out to jog with a companion.

Page, Lafayette, Calif., and Lee, Cambridge, Mass., the daughter of a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were students at the University of California at Berkeley at the time of the slaying.

Lee’s body was found in a shallow grave in the hills five weeks after the slaying. She had died from blows to the head with a blunt instrument, police said.

Pair Argued

Police allege that Lee had jogged off on her own after the two had argued but that Page found her and killed her.

The trial is in its eighth week.

Page repeated under oath his earlier rejection of a taped confession to Oakland police that he had killed Lee.

“After I gave the statement,” he told defense attorney William Gagen, “I knew that I was not responsible” for the killing.

Confession ‘Absurd’

He called the taped confession to police “absurd and far fetched,” saying it was a “hypothetical” version of what might have happened if he had been involved in the killing.

He said police interrogators had suggested he may have killed Lee but may have blacked out and could not remember.

“If there was a possibility I might have done it, I was trying to find out,” he testified. “Somehow we (he and the interrogators) had to make up a story if I did it. That way if I was responsible, I would know.”

Page was to be cross-examined Tuesday by Alameda County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenn Burr. The trial, being heard by a jury of seven women and five men, is in the court of Superior Court Judge Donald McCullum.

Lee’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Francis Lee of Cambridge, have attended the trial. Page’s father, a journalism instructor at Merritt College in Oakland, also has attended the trial.