Tarzana Woman Convicted of Killing Disabled Mate

A 33-year-old Tarzana woman was convicted Wednesday of killing her disabled husband so she could run off with her longtime lover.

A Van Nuys Superior Court jury found Elizabeth Ozerson guilty of second-degree murder in the Dec. 10 slaying of Noray Ozerson, 32, who was shot five times in the couple’s home.

Ozerson stared in disbelief at her attorney, Alan Baum, when the verdict was read in the courtroom of Judge Judith M. Ashmann. Minutes later, Ozerson broke down in sobs and said to Baum, “All 12? All 12 voted guilty?”

Ozerson and her lover of more than five years, Bert Kreisberg, 63, both testified during the five-week trial that she had pledged on numerous occasions to leave her husband, who was partly paralyzed and walked with a cane.

Frustrated by her broken promises, Kreisberg told her that he would break off their relationship unless she divorced her husband, testimony revealed.

Ozerson, an insurance company secretary, testified that she was planning to leave her husband and move to Kreisberg’s Studio City home on the day of the shooting.

Prosecutors had sought a conviction for first-degree. But one juror said after the verdict that the panel members, who deliberated 4 1/2 days, settled on second-degree murder because they found no evidence that the killing was planned, a key element of first-degree murder.

Jurors’ Reasoning

“It seemed she did it in a fit of frustration,” the juror said. “Apparently, it was like a pressure cooker that just blew.”

Ozerson testified that she walked her dog for 30 minutes on the morning of the shooting and returned shortly after 7:30 a.m. to find an intruder in the home. She said she was frightened, ran to a neighbor and summoned police, who discovered her husband dead in the family room.

But detectives said they found no evidence of forced entry or a struggle and believe that some of the victim’s belongings had been scattered around the home in an effort to stage a bungled burglary.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rebecca G. Omens, acknowledging that the case was based on circumstantial evidence, stressed during the trial that Ozerson lied repeatedly to police when she described her marital relationship and events preceding the shooting.

“We know she’s a liar, we know she’s an adulteress,” Omens told the jury in her closing argument. “You look at those things and they provide motive. They provide insight into her character.”

Omens described the victim as a “domineering husband” and argued that Ozerson felt trapped in an unhappy relationship. The prosecutor said her strongest evidence came from Ozerson’s own statements to police after the shooting.

Ozerson repeatedly told investigators that she had never handled a gun, according to testimony. But when detectives tricked her into believing that chemical tests had revealed gunshot residue on her hands, she changed her story and said she had fired her husband’s pistol into the air in the backyard the night before the killing.

Later tests did, in fact, find gunshot residue on gloves that Ozerson had worn the morning of the shooting, police testified.

Baum said he was “shocked and disappointed” by the verdict and would ask the judge to overturn it and order a new trial, a procedural move that is rarely successful.

Ozerson faces a maximum of 17 years to life in state prison when she is sentenced June 18 by Ashmann. She is being held in Sybil Brand Institute pending sentencing.