Troiani Recording Grips Courtroom : Told Police She OKd Paying Marines to Kill Her Husband

In a tape-recorded statement to police that held a Vista courtroom audience spellbound Tuesday, Laura Troiani matter-of-factly told investigators within 12 hours of her husband’s death that she had agreed to pay three Marines $500 each to kill him.

She insisted to her interrogators that she had second thoughts about having her husband killed even though she was unhappily married, but was unable to stop the scheme once it was under way.

“Why would I want to have my husband shot? Sure, we had marital problems. Sure, I was having affairs on the side,” she said at one point in the interview.

When a detective then suggested to her that, with her husband killed, she could pursue a relationship with one of the five former Marines also accused in the murder-for-hire plot, Troiani answered:

“I know, but I was having a ball, being married and fooling around. I’m not having a ball not being married. I’m up on a murder rap. I told these guys . . . not to do it. I begged them . . . “

Tire Tracks Matched Vehicle

Troiani, 25, and the five men were arrested by Oceanside police and Marine Corps authorities the morning after Marine Staff Sgt. Carlo Troiani, 37, was found shot to death on North River Road in eastern Oceanside in August, 1984.

Police were led quickly to Laura Troiani as a suspect because tracks at the scene matched her vehicle’s tires, while Marine investigators at Camp Pendleton were tipped that some of the Marine suspects were boasting on base of having killed someone.

Troiani is charged with hiring the men for $500 each to kill her husband so she could collect on his life insurance proceeds and marry one of the defendants, who was her lover.

Each of the six defendants, who are being tried separately, is accused of killing for money, of lying in wait and of conspiracy to commit murder--all special circumstances that qualify the defendant, if convicted, for the death penalty.

The prosecution expects to wrap up its case today or Thursday. The defense will then begin its case, trying to show that Laura Troiani was vulnerable and was manipulated by the Marines to participate unwillingly in the killing.

Defense attorney Geraldine Russell said in her opening statement that Troiani was an “impressionable, simple young girl who got involved with the schemes of five young Marines.”

“She was used by others who were looking for thrills and seeking some excitement in their own lives, and (she) got caught up in the action of what they were doing,” Russell said, “and she was used by them for their own benefit and their own excitement.”

Some of the 45 prosecution witnesses so far have testified that Troiani was unhappy in her marriage and openly plotted with the Marines--sometimes in the company of others--to “do a hit” on her husband. But it is Troiani’s own statement to police that is considered by prosecutors to be the icing on their case.

Its admission into evidence was the subject of hours of closed courtroom debate and pretrial motions before Superior Court Judge Gilbert Nares. On Monday and Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst finally played the unedited recording publicly for the first time.

Troiani listened seemingly without emotion to her recorded remarks, in which she first denied any knowledge of the crime and, in the end, discussed with police how she agreed to pay the Marines first $400, and then $500, to carry off the crime.

The killers were to be paid $100 more than originally promised, she said, because one of the plans--a car bomb--failed and the task had become “more difficult.”

The interrogation lasted about 4 hours, spread out over a 12-hour period the day after Carlo Troiani was killed. During the questioning, detectives played out several bluffs to entice their suspect into giving more details.

Initially, the police--with little evidence to go on--believed that Carlo Troiani’s slaying was a spur-of-the-moment killing after he accidentally happened across his wife’s car, parked off to the side on a dark, desolate section of North River Road, and discovered her with a man, said Detective Robert George, who sat in the witness box while the tape was played.

He and Detective Ed Jacobs then pretended to have more evidence against her than they had to bait her into talking, and challenged her on inconsistencies in her statements.

They told Troiani of several witnesses to the crime--although in fact there were none--and several times they played on the fact that she should not try to protect the identity of the other suspects at the possible expense of not seeing her two young children “for 20 years” if convicted of murder.

The detectives were slow, patient and persistent in their questioning, sounding neither overly aggressive nor friendly and easygoing. But as the interrogation wore on, they were more abrupt and sharper with her, and aired incredulous disbelief as she changed and amended her statement over and over again.

When, late in the interrogation, Troiani said, “All right, I’ll level with you, I’ll level with you,” one of the detectives retorted sarcastically, “Here’s story No. 20.”

Changed Story

Initially, she told the detectives that she was driving around Oceanside aimlessly for about 12 hours the day and night her husband was killed, and that her two children, ages 2 1/2 and 5, were with her.

An hour into the questioning, she changed her story to say she was abducted by three strange men on two motorcycles who forced her to go to the crime scene to wait for her husband. She could not answer questions about how they knew that Carlo Troiani would be arriving at the scene within minutes.

She then told another version that had five men on two motorcycles, and when pressed to how so many men could ride on two motorcycles, she answered impatiently, “I don’t know.”

As her story evolved, she said she drove from her home to an Oceanside convenience market at the behest of her boyfriend, Jeff Mizner. There, she said, he watched her two children while two Marine acquaintances, identified by the prosecution as Mark Schulz and Russell Harrison, drove her in her car to the scene of the slaying.

Troiani said that she was unsure of their intentions and didn’t resist accompanying them--nor did she try to foil the plot when she realized the pair had a handgun--because she was worried for the safety of her children.

“I thought they were going to rape me, and all I was ever told was not to resist,” she told her interrogators.

She said that, when her husband pulled up in his own car, he was shot from behind and she saw him “half crawling, half staggering” before he was shot a second time, in the back of the head.

The detectives were still fishing for information when, that afternoon, they received a major break in the case in the form of a Marine at Camp Pendleton who identified a fellow Marine who boasted of the killing, George said.

They left Troiani in a holding cell, interviewed the witness and returned to Troiani at 9 that night for a final round of questioning. This time, George said, the detectives had a clearer picture of the crime scenario.

“You’re going down for murder, kid,” they told her.

Troiani answered, “Listen to me. Sure, I thought about killing my husband, sure I did. But then, I told these guys that I did not want it to go through. I told them. I was scared to death. I didn’t want to lose my kids. . . . I said, ‘Guys, you can’t go through with this. You seriously can’t go through with this, for the simple fact we’re all going to get hung.’ ”

She said the final plan was to entice her husband to the scene on the pretense that she had run out of gas, but that she pleaded with the others to drop the idea altogether. “I said, ‘Hey guys, he’s figured it out, you gotta kink the idea. If you don’t, we’re all going to be sent up for life.’ ”

The interrogation, which began at 9 that morning, ended just before 10 that night with Troiani asking for a cigarette.