Common-Law Wife’s Killing of Mate Ruled Manslaughter

A 49-year-old Huntington Beach woman who admits that she twice tried to have her common-law husband killed because he constantly beat her was convicted Tuesday of voluntary manslaughter for shooting him last November.

Marilyn Starbuck, who faces a possible 13-year prison sentence, said she shot Richard Lee (Mack) McBrien in self-defense on Nov. 18, 1986, after he beat her and then threatened to kill her.

Starbuck said McBrien had beaten her during much of their 13-year relationship and that she shot him after he told her she “wouldn’t have to worry about working anymore,” which she said she interpreted as a threat that he was about to kill her.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin said he did not accept her self-defense argument, noting that medical evidence showed that McBrien was shot six times from behind. But he said there was considerable provocation for the shooting, noting McBrien’s history of physically abusing Starbuck.

At Starbuck’s request, McCartin heard the trial without a jury.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard F. Toohey believes that the abuse Starbuck suffered influenced the judge in his decision to find her guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of second-degree murder, as prosecutors had sought.

“There is no doubt that Mr. McBrien was mean to her,” Toohey said. “I don’t have any argument with the judge’s verdict.”

Starbuck testified Tuesday that McBrien was a man angry at the world most of the time who took out his frustrations on her by beating her with his fist and calling her “any cuss word he could think of.”

The two owned a bar in Garden Grove and also operated a small typesetting business. That led to constant arguments, she said.

The day before McBrien’s death, she said, he was upset because a typesetter repairman charged them money even though he did not have the right parts and did not make the repair. McBrien gave her a thrashing for that, and the next morning beat her again because someone who owed them money had failed to pay on time, she said.

“He blamed it on me, said I let people run all over me,” Starbuck testified. “He said he would just have to take it out of my hide.”

While he was doing push-ups in another room, Starbuck said, she picked up a gun she had hidden behind a couch two months earlier and walked toward him. She claims that she did not fire until he was about to get up and move toward her and had told her that she wouldn’t have to worry about working anymore. Prosecutors say the evidence is clear that he was still doing push-ups when the shots were fired.

Toohey went through the events with her on cross-examination and then asked: “Mrs. Starbuck, didn’t you kill him because you were just sick and tired of him?”

“No,” she said. “I was scared. . . . I killed him because I was afraid he was about to kill me.”

Starbuck described years of torment and abuse by McBrien.

A few years ago, McBrien lost $7,500 gambling in Las Vegas, she said, but she didn’t mind.

“When he was in Las Vegas, he wasn’t at home,” she said.

She did admit that in 1981 she paid two men $1,500 each to kill McBrien. The plan went awry, and the two were caught with several weapons and a syringe filled with cyanide. They were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, but McBrien refused to cooperate with authorities in prosecuting Starbuck and the two men.

It wasn’t because he thought she hadn’t tried to kill him, Toohey said.

“It was pretty clear that she was his meal ticket and that without her, he wouldn’t have any money,” Toohey said.

Then in September, 1986--two months before she killed McBrien--Starbuck asked another man at her bar to kill him, she testified. The man refused, but a barmaid who was a close friend of Starbuck told authorities earlier this year she overheard the solicitation.

In fact, the barmaid had kept a note that she said Starbuck had left on the bar for the man that day. It gave the license numbers of all of McBrien’s vehicles and stated: “Very, very paranoid. Street-wise.” Toohey believes that Starbuck was warning the man to be careful.

Toohey asked her about both incidents during cross-examination.

Yes, Starbuck said, she had tried to have McBrien killed.

“I’ve wished him dead many times,” she said.

The defense called several witnesses who testified that McBrien had physically abused Starbuck.

Starbuck had obtained the gun from the barmaid, who later gave police the solicitation note. She had bought the gun for Starbuck at a swap meet after Starbuck told her that she might need protection from McBrien.

Starbuck called police immediately after the midday shooting.

Judge McCartin set Starbuck’s sentencing for Nov. 13. Her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Richard M. Aronson, told the court that he would seek probation. Toohey said probation is unlikely because of the previous attempts to have McBrien killed and the fact that she has an embezzlement conviction.

Toohey said he would not know what sentence he will recommend to the court until he has read a pre-sentencing report prepared by the Probation Department.

Said Aronson: “I hope the system treats her compassionately.”