Love Triangle Murder Case Goes to Jury

An Orange County Superior Court jury began deliberating murder charges Monday against a 20-year-old Anaheim man accused of joining a “hit man” to shoot a Santa Ana attorney over a love triangle.

Timothy S. Stotlar is the first of three defendants who will be tried in the August murder of Jessie M. Grimes, 55, a Santa Ana family-law attorney. Grimes was found dead in the bedroom of his North Broadway apartment in Santa Ana on Aug. 20, shot twice in the chest and once in the head.

George R. Peterson, 28, the alleged hit man, and Valerie L. Kalman, 20, who was romantically involved with both Stotlar and Grimes, are awaiting separate murder trials.

Testimony described an off-and-on live-in relationship between Kalman and Grimes. Shortly before the murder, however, Grimes asked Kalman to leave. Kalman had also begun seeing Stotlar.

Testimony on Gun, Silencer

The prosecution has contended that Stotlar and Kalman planned the murder, with revenge or robbery as a motive. Stotlar is accused of bringing along his friend Peterson because Peterson had a large collection of weapons and boasted of being a hit man.

A friend of Stotlar’s testified in the trial that Stotlar, Kalman and Peterson were at his home the afternoon of the killing. The witness said Peterson drew a .22-caliber handgun equipped with a 14-inch silencer and fired it through a window screen.

“He (Peterson), in essence, tells them what he’s all about: ‘I’m a hit man and I can kill without anybody hearing me,’ ” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson told the jury Monday in closing arguments.

The prosecution outlined during the trial a version of events in which Kalman let Stotlar and Peterson into the apartment and the two men confronted Grimes in his bedroom.

Peterson, prosecutors said, shot Grimes twice in the chest, but in the instant before he died, Grimes lunged at his attacker. As a result, Stotlar put a .32-caliber handgun to Grimes’ head and fired, Robinson said.

Much of the incident was described in court by Kalman’s brother, Sam, who testified that Stotlar detailed the murder to him the following day.

Robinson said the gunmen may have been planning to rob Grimes after the killing, but the noise from Stotlar’s handgun scared them off.

The suspects were stopped on the Santa Ana Freeway by California Highway Patrol officers about half an hour after the murder, because Peterson was driving erratically. The officers found a trunk loaded with weapons, but because they didn’t know about the murder, they charged only Peterson, on counts of speeding and unlawful possession of the weapons, which were confiscated.

Circumstantial Evidence

Grimes’ body was found that night. Several days later, police learned that the weapons in the trunk included the two handguns used in the slaying. Peterson was arrested again.

Stotlar was arrested two months later.

A neighbor of Grimes’ testified that she saw Kalman and two “nicely dressed” men enter Grimes’ apartment the night of the murder. Robinson said Peterson and Stotlar were wearing nice clothes with long coats when they were stopped by CHP officers.

In closing arguments Monday, both sides told the jury that the case against Stotlar consists mostly of circumstantial evidence. Defense attorney Alex J. Forgette contended that there is no direct evidence linking Stotlar with the murder except the testimony of Kalman’s brother, Sam, who has admitted to previously perjuring himself.

Forgette also said there were no fingerprints found on the handgun Stotlar purportedly used. And he contended that Stotlar did not have a motive to kill Grimes, whom he did not know.

During the trial, Sam Kalman admitted that he erroneously testified in Stotlar’s preliminary hearing about exactly when he learned of the murder.

“All these (charges) are derived from one thing, the testimony of a liar,” Forgette told the jury.

“Without the testimony of Sam Kalman, there is not one shred of evidence that connects Tim Stotlar to this crime.”