2 Sentenced for Helping Meier Kill Mother

Two confessed murderers, one described as a “lost soul” and the other as an “American tragedy,” were each sentenced Thursday to 15 years to life in state prison for helping a friend strangle his mother and attempt to kill his 8-year-old brother.

Richard Allen Parker, 24, and Matthew Adam Jay, 19, pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder in the Oct. 13, 1985, strangulation death of Shirley Rizk. The woman was the mother of Torran Lee Meier, who was sentenced in December to the California Youth Authority for his part in the killing. Parker and Jay also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Meier’s brother, Rory Rizk.

Attorneys for the men drew strikingly different pictures of their clients’ backgrounds.

Parker, a drifter who served time in County Jail, was abandoned by his parents at 5 and lived on the streets after his foster parents died when he was 18.

Vulnerable to Persuasion

Jay was a good student and practicing church member whose close-knit family and supportive friends filled the courtroom Thursday. Both men, however, were characterized by their attorneys as having drug problems and passive temperaments that made them vulnerable to Meier’s “forceful” requests to help kill his abusive mother.

Pasadena Superior Court Judge George Xanthos, who also presided over the Meier trial, admonished the co-defendants for not resisting Meier’s entreaties.

“In the course of this trial, the thing I couldn’t get through my head is how a 16-year-old boy could go up to two adults and say, ‘I’ve decided to kill my mother, could you come and help me?’ and how they could say ‘sure,’ ” Xanthos said.

“With all the sermonizing we do, we somehow have missed the point of teaching our young people to say ‘no,’ ” he said. “All Mr. Parker and Mr. Jay had to do was say ‘no.’ ”

Jay and Parker took turns with Meier in strangling Rizk in her Canoga Park home, according to court testimony. The three young men then put her body in the trunk of her car, drove the car to Malibu Canyon, set it on fire and pushed it over a cliff.

The three decided to kill Rory Rizk when they realized he had witnessed the crime, according to testimony. Meier gave his brother a sandwich and malted milk laced with poison, which the boy refused to eat. The boy was later bound and gagged and placed in the car with his dead mother. He managed to crawl out a window of the burning car and flag down a passing motorist.

Edward G. Feldman, deputy district attorney, disagreed that the two defendants were passive participants in the crime.

“There was indeed active participation in that strangulation,” he said, citing the enormity of the offense and the planning and cruelty with which it was carried out.

Jay, who at 14 began having problems with drugs and alcohol, according to testimony, had 44 letters written on his behalf. The letters, which often referred to him “as a loving, caring person” and stressed his potential for rehabilitation, were written by friends, family members and school and church officials.

Jay’s mother, Lynn, is a priest at an Episcopalian church in Valencia, and his father, David, is an English teacher at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, said his attorney, Elliot E. Stanford.

“What happened to Matthew Jay is nothing less than an American tragedy,” Stanford said. “It is a black mark on an otherwise beautiful person’s life and it’s indicative of the serious dangers that drugs can cause.”

According to a probation report prepared for the sentencing, Jay assisted in strangling Shirley Rizk, bought the snail and rat poison intended for Rory Rizk and drove the getaway car after Shirley’s car was pushed over the cliff.

Parker, whom psychiatrists characterized as a “lost soul” with the emotional maturity of a 7-year-old, served time in County Jail for a commercial burglary and petty theft, according to the probation report. When he met Meier--about two weeks before the killing--Parker was working occasionally as a day laborer and living in a small hut on a vacant lot, said his attorney, Carol Weissman.

‘The Perfect Friend’

“He was looking for an apartment, looking for work, looking for friends,” Weissman said. “He saw in Torran Meier the perfect friend to straighten him out.”

Parker placed a rope, fashioned as a noose, around Shirley Rizk’s neck, the probation report said, and helped Meier set her car on fire and push it over the cliff.

Meier, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in June, 1986, is serving a sentence that can end at any time officials deem appropriate, but must end by his 25th birthday. His sentence is less severe because the jury determined that, because of years of verbal abuse by his mother, he had suffered an emotional breakdown and was not capable of premeditation or malice. His two accomplices received more severe sentences because they had no apparent reason for hostility against Rizk.

Jay, who was 18 at the time of the crime, will serve the first seven years of his prison term in the California Youth Authority because of his age, Xanthos said. The judge recommended that Parker receive psychological counseling while in prison.