Wilson Murder Trial Nears End : Flamboyant Defense Lawyer Closes With a Vengeance

Defense attorney J. Tony Serra, with the flamboyance of a country preacher and the mimicry of a Las Vegas comic, ripped into key prosecution witnesses at the Richard Dale Wilson murder trial Tuesday, calling them “liars and alcoholics” whose testimony was “utter baloney.”

Co-defense counsel Joel W. Baruch was so inspired by Serra’s closing argument that afterwards he predicted it would take jurors less than a day of deliberations to return a not guilty verdict.

“I’m going out on a limb saying that,” Baruch said. “But that jury is ready to acquit (Wilson) right now.”

Wilson, a 47-year-old tax accountant, is charged with the Aug. 2, 1983, shooting death of Jeffrey Malloy Parker, an unemployed salesman, on the front porch of his mother’s Costa Mesa home. Prosecutors contend that Wilson was seeking revenge because Parker was charged with the fatal shooting of Wilson’s girlfriend, 33-year-old socialite Joan McShane Mills, during a night of drugs and sex at the Bevery Hills Hotel three months earlier. Parker was fatally shot the night before his preliminary hearing was to begin.

But Wilson, who lives in San Francisco, contends he was home when the killing occurred and has produced a witness who testified to having breakfast with him there at 8 a.m. after the shooting.

Because Wilson is accused of “lying in wait” for the victim, he could receive a sentence of life without parole if convicted.

Jurors in the court of Superior Court Judge Luis A. Cardenas in Westminster are expected to begin deliberations this afternoon after a rebuttal argument by Deputy Dist. Atty. Douglas H. Woodsmall.

Prosecutor Takes Notes

Woodsmall took plenty of notes Tuesday as he listened to Serra, a San Francisco lawyer whose sweeping courtroom style is legend in legal circles.

Serra’s long, gray ponytail was neatly in place in the morning session as he led jurors through a parade of philosophy about morality in the universe and the limitations of the law. But in the afternoon, when he was hammering away at the prosecution, the ponytail had come loose and his hair was more out of control than his waving arms.

The key witnesses against Wilson are his own brother, Okel Wilson, and his brother-in-law, Robert C. Hale, who both have said that Richard Wilson admitted to them that he had killed Parker.

But both have admitted drinking problems, and Hale tried to recant part of his testimony about what he heard Wilson say.

Serra called them “controversial personages . . . because of the alcoholism, their hatred and fear.”

It was Okel Wilson who was Serra’s primary target. He had been to rehabilitation centers three times for a serious drinking problem, and he did not deny allegations by Serra that he was a bigamist and once tried to get his wife to take the blame when he struck somebody while driving a car.

“He wanted to get back at his brother who has succeeded, who is not an alcoholic,” Serra said. “The truth would have been if he came in here and said ‘I was sloshed’ (at the time he says Wilson confessed), I was a human wreck.’

Orange County prosecutors received a few Serra stones too.

Serra told jurors that a guilty verdict for Wilson would be “one of the great miscarriages of justice” in any murder trial. He called prosecutor Woodsmall’s case “shabby, fool-hearted nonsense.”

Serra’s special talent is in mimicking the testimony of witnesses. But the peak of his performance came when he used a low, childlike voice to show how a youngster might look at the prosecution’s case.

“Children would scoff at it,” Serra declared.