Local News in Brief : Case ‘Flimsy’--Suspect

The husband of an Israeli woman arrested in the 1980 mail-bomb murder of a Manhattan Beach secretary said Thursday that the federal prosecutors’ case against her is “flimsy” but refused to elaborate.

Robert Steven Manning, 36, said in a telephone interview from his Occupied West Bank home that he did not understand why his wife, Rochelle Ida Manning, 48, was arrested Wednesday upon her arrival at Los Angeles International Airport.

“It’s all very flimsy to me,” said Manning, who remains a fugitive in Israel. “I really have nothing to say.”

Manning and his wife are charged with the July 17, 1980, murder of Patricia Wilkerson, 35, a secretary at Prowest Computer Corp. Wilkerson was killed when she plugged into an electrical outlet an “invention” that came in the mail. An accompanying note said the package would “open a new age in computer sales and advertising.”

Federal investigators said the couple’s fingerprints were on the package but have not disclosed a motive for the bombing.

Prosecutors have been unsuccessful in an attempt to extradite Robert Manning. FBI documents obtained by various news agencies in 1986 linked him to violent Israeli elements of the Jewish Defense League.