Both Sides Assail Court-Martial Witness

There is only one thing that both sides agree on in the court-martial of Sgt. Joseph L. Thomas, an El Toro marine accused of bludgeoning his wife to death: The prosecution’s star witness, an admitted accomplice in the crime, “is a piece of filth.”

Capt. Bradley N. Garber, the prosecuting attorney, hurled that epithet at the witness, Lance Cpl. Mitchael Nelson, in his closing arguments Wednesday in an effort to convince the jury that the case against Thomas did not hinge on his friend’s admissions. Nelson’s only role in the case, Garber said, was to tell jurors what they already knew.

Nelson, 24, won immunity from prosecution by testifying that he watched Thomas bludgeon his pregnant wife, Melinda, with a tire iron in the early-morning hours of Dec. 9, then helped him strap her body in the couple’s car and send it hurtling off a cliff.

But the defense attorney insinuated that Nelson killed Melinda Thomas, 23.

“Mitch admits to everything, everything except striking the blow,” attorney Mark Stevens said. “This is where the government and the defense come together in agreeing that Mitch Nelson is a piece of filth. . . .”

“ Maybe someone should be arrested for the murder of Melinda Thomas, but it is not that man,” he said, wheeling around to point at his client, who sat ashen-faced and impassive through more than 6 hours of closing arguments.

The guilty man, Stevens said in an allusion to Nelson, “is walking around in Missouri somewhere.”

The statements brought to a close more than a month of court-martial testimony at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in which the prosecution has sought to portray Thomas, 28, as a manipulative, calculating man who planned his wife’s murder so he could collect her $50,000 insurance policy. The couple’s burning car was found by a hunter at about 4:30 a.m. at the bottom of a ravine off Ortega Highway just over the Orange County line.

The defense has attacked the prosecution’s witnesses, accusing the experts of incompetence. Other witnesses have been accused of having poor memories, being out to get Thomas or, in Nelson’s case, of being a liar.

Defense attorneys have charged that prosecution witnesses were unreliable because they were not interviewed by investigators until 4 months after Melinda Thomas’ death.

Riverside County coroner officials initially ruled the death a suicide. That ruling was changed to homicide 4 months later after Naval Investigative Service officers arrested Nelson in connection with the killing.

Relatives of the victim and the accused sat quietly on opposite sides of the courtroom through the long hours of testimony. The only outburst came when Melinda Thomas’ sister ran from the courtroom sobbing during Garber’s closing statement.

“The accused, Sgt. Thomas, sat on top of his helpless, suddenly awakened pregnant wife and remorselessly, coldly smashed the life from her body,” Garber said. “The blows were calculated to kill, but pleas for mercy did not move him. . . . The last words Melinda spoke in her life were the words the accused least deserved to hear, ‘I love you.’ ”