Man Faces Life Term in Killing of Father; Case Goes to Jury

Jury deliberations began Tuesday in the trial of a young Glendale man charged with murdering his father, a Filipino-American newspaper executive, and trying to disguise the killing as a political assassination.

In closing statements, an attorney for Arnel Salvatierra told the jury that the killing was justifiable homicide because the 20-year-old had been abused by his father, Oscar.

“If you convict Arnel Salvatierra of first-degree murder, it will be as if Oscar Salvatierra’s hand will come out of the grave and his last act of terrorism will happen with you as his accomplices,” defense attorney Leslie Abramson said.

In an impassioned closing statement, Abramson said the younger Salvatierra shot his father because, “frightened by years of terror, driven by years of terror,” he was afraid his father would kill him because he was failing most of his classes at Glendale High School.

Fear for Own Life

The defense attorney argued that because he was acting out of fear for his own life, provoked by years of abuse, Arnel Salvatierra should be found guilty.

Salvatierra is being tried as an adult in Pasadena Superior Court for the Feb. 19, 1986, killing his 41-year-old father, an executive of the San Francisco-based Philippine News.

The crime briefly attracted international attention when it was disclosed that, a day before his death, Oscar Salvatierra had received a letter threatening him with death because of the newspaper’s coverage of the political turmoil that marked the final days of Ferdinand E. Marcos as president of the Philippines. The Philippine News was one of the leading Filipino newspapers in the United States opposed to Marcos.

Body in Bedroom

But Arnel Salvatierra and his girlfriend, Teressa K. DeBurger, were arrested a day after the elder Salvatierra’s body was found in the bedroom of his north Glendale home.

In his trial, testifying in his own defense, Salvatierra admitted sending his father the death threat, and he described how he crept into his father’s bedroom and shot him three times in the head as he slept. He also told the jury that he had originally planned to kill his father on Feb. 14, but was foiled when his father stayed late at his office.

In her closing statement Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Wondries told the jury that Salvatierra’s testimony demonstrated that his father’s killing was premeditated.

She also told the jury that Arnel Salvatierra did not act out of fear, but out of anger over his father’s attempts to break off his son’s relationship with DeBurger.

‘You Hate Him’

“He shot his father not once, not twice, but three times,” Wondries said. “The coroner said both the first two shots were fatal. He was dead, absolutely, clinically, never-to-be-revived dead. . . . If you’re afraid, why shoot someone a third time? You shoot him a third time because you hate him.”

In his instructions to the jury, Superior Court Judge Gilbert Alston said that in order to convict Salvatierra of first-degree murder, the jury must find that the killing was premeditated and motivated by malice, not fear.

In her closing statement, Abramson said Arnel Salvatierra envisioned a “nightmarish version of what would happen” if his father found out about his grades: “He gets the gun and points it at Arnel. Maybe he gets killed, maybe his mother tries to intervene and she gets it, but one of them gets it.”

Arnel Salvatierra could be sentenced to 27 years to life in state prison if convicted.

DeBurger, 20, faces a January trial on a charge of being an accessory to the slaying.