Troiani Case Co-Defendant Pleads Guilty to Murder

In a plea bargain that saved him from possible execution in the gas chamber, Mark Schulz pleaded guilty Wednesday to the first-degree murder of Carlo Troiani and will now face a virtually certain sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Schulz was the triggerman in the murder plot against instigated by Laura Troiani, who previously was convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison.

“I killed Carlo Troiani and I did so while lying in wait, with a firearm, a .357 magnum,” Schulz, his voice cracking, said to Vista Superior Court Judge Gilbert Nares.

Carlo Troiani was shot twice from behind by Schulz the night of Aug. 9, 1984, after being lured to a desolate Oceanside road on the pretense that his wife had car trouble. Laura Troiani sat behind the wheel of the car and tapped the brake pedal, using the brake lights as a signal to Schulz to move out from his hiding place and shoot her husband as he got out of his own car and approached hers.

Death Sentence Risk

Schulz previously had pleaded not guilty to the murder by reason of insanity, but agreed to plead guilty, his attorneys said, rather than run the risk of being found guilty and sane by a jury--which could have led to a death sentence.

“Our job was to save his life and we did,” Thomas Smith, one of Schulz’s two court-appointed defense attorneys, said after the hourlong hearing.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Phil Walden said Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller agreed to the plea bargain and not to seek the death penalty against Schulz because it was consistent with the jury’s findings against Troiani. Prosecutors also agreed to drop a second special circumstance allegation, that Schulz murdered for financial gain by having expected to receive $500 for his role.

“Our feeling was that since we tried the instigator and put every piece of evidence before the jury, and they returned a sentence of life without parole, we felt it was certainly a just result to allow an 18-year-old Marine who she hired to do the killing to receive the same sentence,” Walden said.

“We attempted to seek the death penalty on Laura Troiani and 12 members of the community told us what the case was worth. If they said life without parole for her (was appropriate), it was (consistent) to give him life without parole too.”

Five Co-Defendants Were Marines

Schulz was to have been the first of five co-defendants, all Marines at the time of the murder, to face charges of first-degree murder for their roles in Troiani’s killing. Walden said he “would not be surprised” if the other defense attorneys propose their own plea bargains, but he would not elaborate on what terms he would agree to for the others.

One other co-defendant, Russell Harrison, was at the murder scene but is not alleged to have actually shot Troiani. The other three co-defendants were at a nearby convenience store, biding their time and watching Laura Troiani’s two young children.

Schulz, now 22, will be sentenced by Nares on Dec. 16.

A psychiatrist hired by the defense had argued in court papers that Schulz was temporarily insane at the time of the killing, “blacking out” just before the shooting and not regaining full consciousness until afterward. That blackout, said Dr. Philip Solomon, was a symptom of “attention deficit disorder,” which went undiagnosed when Schulz was a child and haunted him during his upbringing because of resulting learning disabilities.

“He could not apply moral issues or legal and social laws and customs to himself, because he was brain-handicapped and clinically too depressed and miserable to know properly or care about what he was doing,” Solomon wrote. “The sergeant they were plotting against was not a live human being to Mark, but a stylized figurehead like a piece in a chess game to be attacked and destroyed.”

Two court-appointed psychiatrists had submitted to Nares, on the other hand, that Schulz was not insane at the time of the killing.

Lead defense attorney Dan Cronin said he was holding out hope that the judge might sentence his client to a term of 27 years to life in prison versus life without the possibility of parole.

To do that, Nares would have to dismiss the special circumstance of lying in wait--one of several criteria that qualify the death sentence in California--even though Schulz admitted to it Wednesday.

Second Thoughts About Insanity Plea

Cronin said Schulz had second thoughts about the insanity plea because it might have condemned him to life in a mental hospital. Instead, Cronin said he would ask Nares to consider Schulz’s mental condition as a mitigating factor to justify leniency toward the former Marine.

“We’ll try to get the court to exercise its discretion,” Cronin said. “The medical reports might not be sufficient to prove he was insane, but they are mitigation. I wouldn’t put a percentage number on our chances, but it is enough to justify my doing the work to bring the motion.”

Walden said he did not expect Nares to dismiss the special circumstance admission by Schulz, especially since Nares previously had described the prosecution’s case against Troiani as “simply overwhelming . . . a tsunami of evidence.”

Cronin said he also would ask the state Department of Corrections to transfer Schulz to a Wisconsin state prison so he could be nearer to his family. Interstate pacts allow for such prisoner transfers.

Cronin said the plea bargain, which was signed by both parties on Tuesday, was prompted because of the “likelihood” of a death sentence against Schulz.

“Three jurors (who heard the Troiani trial) said they would have voted for death on Mark,” Cronin said. “On balance, this (plea) was the best we could look for.”

‘Mental Problems Are Treatable’

Cronin said his client “is not dangerous to society. His mental problems are treatable. He’s matured quite a bit in jail and is more responsible now.”

Co-counsel Smith said he believed Schulz killed Troiani “because he wanted to do something as crazy as he could. He was mad at the Marine Corps, and mad at the world.”

He said Schulz was considering suicide at the time of the killing because he was on the brink of being kicked out of the Marine Corps for disciplinary problems--a failure that, compounded with a troubled upbringing, teen-age alcoholism and expulsion from high school, would have been the final straw. “Failure as a Marine was the most depressing thing yet in his life,” Smith said.

Cronin added, “He hasn’t said much about Laura, but I can tell you he really doesn’t like her. It’s difficult to get information out of him about the events leading up to it, but if it hadn’t been for Laura Troiani, he never would have killed Carlo Troiani. He would have committed suicide. Laura Troiani gave him another outlet. She offered him an opportunity. He’s the kind of guy who would have charged a machine gun nest in a war in order to get noticed. War would have been a good outlet for him.