OBSESSION : Prostitute’s Murder Kindles Bizarre Testimony of Vendetta and Revenge

A man from Beverly Hills is on trial for murder in the shooting death of a love-crazed prostitute who tormented him after he rejected her.

The trial in Van Nuys Superior Court of Gregory Alan Cavalli, 24, has revealed several bizarre aspects of the case:

The prosecution witnesses include a transsexual who performs in pornographic films, a former cocaine addict, a man with alleged ties to a notorious felon and a woman who said she suffered a nervous breakdown eight months ago after her mother was killed by her son.

One witness backtracked from his positive identification of Cavalli as the driver of a getaway car. But another witness quoted the first as saying that he was changing his story in hopes of collecting money from the defendant’s wealthy family.

The victim, June Mincher, 29, of West Hollywood, had spent an estimated $20,000 on cosmetic surgery to alter her nose, hips and cheekbones and to enlarge her bust line to 66 inches, according to testimony.

Mincher carried as much as $12,000 in cash, rolled up and tucked beneath her wig, and owned a lavender Rolls Royce, a Mercedes-Benz and a sports car, a friend of the victim testified.

The trial in the courtroom of Judge Darlene E. Schempp enters its third week today and may go to the jury by the end of the week.

The prosecutor and two defense attorneys disagree on the circumstances surrounding the May 3, 1984, death of Mincher and the wounding of her friend and client, Christian Pierce, 24, of Encino.

Cavalli is also on trial for the attempted murder of Pierce.

The exact circumstances of the shooting have not been made clear in the trial, but Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew W. Diamond alleges that Cavalli was driving a getaway car when another man, who has never been apprehended, confronted and shot the victims on a Sepulveda Boulevard sidewalk just north of Vanowen Street in Van Nuys.

The defense maintains that Cavalli was living in Phoenix at the time of the shooting, hiding from Mincher.

On certain events leading to the killing, however, there is no dispute.

Mincher, who had at least 33 aliases, developed a crush on Cavalli during several months of telephone conversations. The conversations started in the summer of 1983, when Cavalli responded to Mincher’s advertisement for sexual services in an underground newspaper.

Cavalli knew Mincher by one of her aliases, Pam Rogers. That first call, Cavalli’s lawyer said, was “the biggest mistake of his life.”

The two talked for several hours a day. Cavalli believed he was in love and asked to meet her. When she declined, he finally went to her apartment and broke down her door.

There his fantasy ended.

Cavalli discovered that Mincher weighed nearly 250 pounds, 60 or 70 pounds more than in her picture in the advertisement. Repulsed by her appearance, Cavalli rejected her sexual overtures.

“When he saw her, reality did not match his imagination--his vision of the woman he had been talking to all these months on the telephone,” defense attorney Edward A. Rucker told the jury in his opening statement.

“He was cruelly disappointed by the actual person he saw.”

Cavalli told investigators that he saw Mincher only twice and that they never had sexual relations, Detective Sandra Bobbitt testified.

Scorned, Mincher launched a campaign of harassment against Cavalli, his father, his grandmother and other relatives, testimony showed.

Cavalli and his father went to several police agencies complaining of incessant phone calls from Mincher and her friends. The callers threatened to kill Cavalli and derided him as a homosexual, witnesses testified.

Telephone records showed that as many as 72 calls in 45 minutes were made from Mincher’s apartment to the Cavalli family. Hundreds of phone calls were made almost daily.

Inexplicably, the records also showed several calls to the Vatican.

One witness, Robin Taylor, who described herself to the jury as a biological male who has undergone a sex-change operation and now appears in pornographic films, testified that she and Mincher were best friends, “like sisters.”

She said Mincher let her listen secretly to conversations with Cavalli. He repeatedly threatened to kill Mincher if she did not leave him alone, Taylor testified. She said she tried without success to persuade Mincher to stop calling him.

“She told me: ‘I don’t care, I’m in love with him,’ ” Taylor said.

Mincher was the chief suspect in the November, 1983, firebombing of Cavalli’s car and the February, 1984, arson at a Santa Monica military-surplus store owned by Cavalli’s father, Richard, police officers testified. Investigators lacked evidence against Mincher and did not arrest her. Neither could they locate her to ask about the phone calls.

Cavalli had sent Mincher photos of himself in body-builder poses. She sent them back with his head cut off and filled the envelopes with rose petals.

To protect his family, the elder Cavalli said he spent more than $200,000 on private security guards and relocated his son in Phoenix.

While his son was hiding out in Arizona, phone records show that two calls were made from his apartment to Mincher’s apartment. The defense has not explained the calls.

Identified as Driver

Two witnesses have identified Cavalli as the driver of the car at the shooting scene. Their testimony is being disputed by the defense.

Prosecutor Diamond maintains that Cavalli drove or flew to Los Angeles the afternoon or evening of May 3, participated in the killing at 10:30 p.m., then returned to Phoenix.

Defense attorneys Rucker and Mitchell W. Egers said they will establish that Cavalli was in his Phoenix apartment with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting.

The defense points to Mincher’s life style as a prostitute and madam and suggests that many people may have had a motive to kill her.

“This is not just a business, perhaps unsavory in and of itself, but it carries with it an entire social world that she lived in,” Rucker told the jury in the opening statement. “Sort of the dark underside of Los Angeles society. An underside populated by people who dealt in narcotics, theft and violence.”

Taylor, the transsexual, testified that Mincher made enough as a prostitute to pay cash for cars and furs and to spend more than $20,000 over the years to alter her looks.

Changes in Appearance

Cavalli’s appearance has changed considerably since May, 1984, when he was about 50 pounds heavier, muscle-bound and mustachioed.

But Pierce, the other shooting victim, and another witness have testified that they saw Cavalli in a car outside Mincher’s apartment building just minutes before the shooting and that he was talking with the man who later pulled the trigger.

The defense attorneys have attempted to discredit Pierce’s testimony by pointing out that he initially told investigators that he could identify the shooter but not the driver.

In addition, another witness has testified that Pierce at one time worked for Eddie Nash, a Los Angeles nightclub owner and convicted drug dealer. Pierce has not been recalled to the stand to respond to that allegation, which the defense attorneys are expected to cite in final arguments in an effort to impugn Pierce’s testimony.

The second witness, Steven Thomas Rucker (no relation to attorney Rucker), positively identified Cavalli as the driver, in police photos a few days after the shooting and later at the preliminary hearing.

No Longer Sure

When he testified at the trial, however, Steven Rucker said he could no longer be “100% positive.”

His certainty diminished, he said, because he realized that he was not wearing his glasses on the night of the shooting and because he was a daily user of cocaine at the time.

In addition, Steven Rucker said he recently watched a television movie about a man falsely convicted of rape who was later freed from prison when witnesses admitted that they made a mistake. Rucker said the movie weighed heavily on his conscience and caused him to re-evaluate his original statements.

However, a woman with whom Steven Rucker had been living until recently testified that Rucker told her he was changing his testimony because he hoped to make money from the defendant’s wealthy family. Cavalli’s grandmother, Mary Bowles, owns the Beverly Hills real estate investment firm of Bowles & Associates, where Cavalli’s father works.

“He bragged to me and everyone he knew that he was going to change his testimony and come out with a lot of money and live the good life from then on,” Winifred Jean Stephan testified.

Expected to Be Recalled

Steven Rucker is expected to be recalled to the stand by the defense to answer that charge.

Prosecutor Diamond said in an interview that there is no evidence the Cavalli family offered or paid Steven Rucker any money for his testimony, only that Rucker allegedly hoped to collect.

The defense has attempted to paint Stephan as an unstable woman and an unreliable witness. On the witness stand, Stephan acknowledged that she suffered a nervous breakdown in October, precipitated, she said, “by my son killing my mother.”

But Stephan said that she has recovered from the breakdown and that the incident has nothing to do with her testimony regarding Steven Rucker.

Cavalli is free on $75,000 bail pending the outcome of the trial.