Woman Who Killed Disabled Husband Gets 17 Years to Life

A 33-year-old Tarzana woman was sentenced Thursday to 17 years to life in state prison for the December murder of her disabled husband.

Elizabeth Ozerson, who has continued to proclaim her innocence, was convicted May 20 of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Noray Ozerson, 32, in their home.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ashmann imposed the standard 15-years-to-life sentence for the second-degree conviction and added two years for use of a gun.

In a probation officer’s report, Ozerson was quoted as saying that her husband may have arranged his own murder and orchestrated it in a way to implicate her. She said he was distraught because he was partly paralyzed, causing him to limp and use a cane, and suspected that she was having an extramarital affair, the report stated.

Prosecutors argued during the trial that Elizabeth Ozerson, an insurance company secretary, killed her husband so she could run off with her acknowledged longtime lover, Bert Kreisberg, 63, of Studio City.

She testified that she returned from walking the family dog the morning of the killing to see an intruder in the house. Neighbors summoned police, who found her husband dead on the living room floor.

Incriminating Statements

The most incriminating evidence came from Elizabeth Ozerson’s own statements to police, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Rebecca G. Omens.

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

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

Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Dolley described Elizabeth Ozerson as “cold and calculating” and said she “may have even convinced herself that she is innocent,” the probation report stated.

She will be eligible for parole in about 10 years.