Kyle Guilty of Lesser Crime in Father’s Death

In a verdict signaling a belief that Ricky Kyle did not intend to kill his multimillionaire father when he gunned him down in July, 1983, jurors in his retrial convicted him Friday of involuntary manslaughter.

Kyle, 24, showed little emotion when the verdict was read but later had tears in his eyes as he told reporters that he was “unhappy” that he was not acquitted altogether.

“To be honest with you I feel like I was innocent and that I acted properly when my father fired a .357 magnum in my face,” said Kyle, who remains free on $100,000 bail pending sentencing Feb. 6.

“I feel like I don’t deserve to go to prison,” he added at another point. Kyle’s first trial ended in a mistrial in April, 1985, after jurors deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of a first-degree murder conviction.

Jurors Aren’t Talking

After deliberating 17 days, jurors left the courtroom without speaking to reporters. Reached by telephone, foreman Edward J. Arellano said the panel had agreed not to grant interviews explaining the verdict.

Attorneys for both sides, however, said that in finding the defendant guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the panel must have accepted the defense theory that Henry Harrison Kyle, 60, had fired the first shot.

The prosecution had argued that the younger Kyle, fearing that he was about to be disinherited, had plotted his father’s death, awakening him in the middle of the night with a phony story about a break-in at their Bel-Air mansion in order to draw him downstairs. The elder Kyle wounded his son in the elbow during the ensuing struggle.

During the five-month trial, several witnesses testified that Ricky Kyle had confided a longstanding desire to kill his father.

Describing the jury’s conclusion as “incredible,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John M. Moulin, a co-prosecutor, said he believes that panel members felt sympathy for the defendant because of his clean-cut appearance and the harsh treatment he had received from his father. In presenting its case, the prosecution had conceded that the elder Kyle had physically and verbally abused his son.

Real Estate Holdings

Kyle at the time of his death was president of Four Star International Inc., a television and movie production firm, and had amassed a fortune in real estate holdings across the Southwest.

“The only theory for involuntary manslaughter was that the father had turned and fired at Rick Kyle and that Rick Kyle had fired in an honest but unreasonable belief that his father was trying to kill him,” Moulin said.

The prosecutor said he will seek the maximum six-year prison sentence based in part on testimony showing that Ricky “has used cocaine quite frequently in the past and has committed a number of thefts.”

Co-defense attorney John D. Vandevelde said he hopes that Superior Court Judge Robert T. Altman will grant his client probation so that Kyle can “go on with his life without having to interrupt it any more than it has been.”

Absence of Half Sister

The most significant difference between the first and second trial was the absence this time of testimony from Kyle’ half sister, Jackie Phillips, who had previously testified that Ricky confessed to the murder after their father’s funeral. Instead, the prosecution, which called about 30 witnesses, relied on testimony from Phillips’ then-fiance, Henry S. Miller III, who was present during the alleged conversation.

Co-defense counsel Steve Sumner of Dallas alleged in a recent telephone interview that the prosecution “tried to hide” Phillips because of inconsistencies between her testimony and Miller’s.

Stanley M. Weisberg, the lead prosecutor, conceded in an interview last month that Phillips was a “highly emotional” witness whose cocaine addiction and reaction to her father’s death were “distractions.” But Weisberg, who recently became a Los Angeles municipal judge, contended that he did not call Phillips to the stand because “she could not add anything to the case.”

In the first trial, the defense waited 10 weeks--until after the prosecution put on its case--before admitting that Ricky had fired the shot that killed his father.

Sumner, who presented 25 witnesses, said he learned from the first trial that the jury was confused about the self-defense theory. This time, Sumner said, the defense disclosed its theory from the outset, concentrating more on forensic evidence in order to make it clearer.