Mail Bomb Target Tells of Angry Meeting

A Manhattan Beach woman who was the intended target of a mail bomb that killed her secretary in 1980 testified Thursday that she had an angry confrontation with one of the defendants less than a month before the fatal blast occurred.

Brenda Crouthamel Adams testified in Los Angeles federal court that wealthy Hawthorne real estate developer William Ross continually interrupted three contractors that she had brought along to inspect a two-bedroom bungalow she wanted to buy from him.

She said she was so upset by the June 23 confrontation that she called her closest friend, Susan Zolla, to tell her about it. “I told her that I thought that Bill Ross had acted like an ass,” the 42-year-old Adams testified.

Her version of the confrontation over the Manhattan Beach house came at the end of two days of testimony she gave in the trial of Ross, 52, and Rochelle Ida Manning, 48. The two are accused of mailing a bomb that killed Patricia Wilkerson, 32, at a computer company that Adams operated with her husband, Bill Adams.

The parcel--mailed at the Mission Hills post office in the San Fernando Valley--was addressed to “Brenda Crouthamel.” Wilkerson opened the package when it arrived on July 17, 1980, and plugged it in. The parcel exploded, killing her instantly, federal postal inspectors said.

Manning’s husband, Robert Steven Manning, 36, is also charged in the murder, but he is a fugitive living on the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Adams took the stand to rebut defense contentions that Ross was too wealthy to quibble over the sale of a modest home. The disagreement over the bungalow, defense attorney Mitchell W. Egers argued, was businesslike in nature and was no reason to try to kill Brenda Adams.

On the witness stand, Adams gave a differing account.

She said Ross was anxious to conclude the deal because she had promised him an exclusive listing on her home on the Manhattan Beach strand, which would have given him a foothold in the lucrative beach property market.

She later reneged on the promise, touching off the disagreement over the bungalow.

Adams and Ross were embroiled in a lawsuit for 3 1/2 years, and Adams had hoped that they could settle their differences during the June 23 inspection tour.

But the meeting turned confrontational, Adams testified, as Ross repeatedly objected to repairs suggested by the contractors who accompanied her. “It was very angry,” she said of the meeting.

Zolla testified that Adams told her that Ross at one point during the meeting jumped close to her as he heatedly argued and that she was frightened momentarily. Zolla took the stand after Adams.

Zolla quoted her as saying, “Thank God Bob the plumber was there.”

The disagreement prompted Adams to tell postal investigators looking into the explosion that Ross was “the No. 1 suspect,” court documents showed. She reiterated that belief in testimony Wednesday.

On cross-examination, Adams acknowledged that she told investigators about other people who might want to harm her, including one man reportedly upset about her marriage to Bill Adams.

Postal authorities arrested Rochelle Manning in June at Los Angeles International Airport after she arrived on a flight from Israel, where she lives with her husband. Her fingerprints were found on the letter that accompanied the package bomb and Robert Manning’s fingerprints were on the parcel, investigators said.

Ross, who met the couple in the early 1970s while in the Jewish Defense League, was arrested in August on charges that he induced the Mannings to send the bomb to Adams.

Defense attorneys are expected to open their case when the trial before Judge Dickran Tevrizian Jr. resumes Wednesday.