Son Found Guilty of Manslaughter for Killing Father

A young Glendale man who killed his father, a Filipino-American newspaper executive, and tried to disguise the slaying as political assassination was found guilty Thursday of voluntary manslaughter.

After deliberating for two days, a Pasadena Superior Court jury rejected a prosecutor’s argument that 20-year-old Arnel Salvatierra was guilty of first-degree murder for fatally shooting his father, Oscar.

Salvatierra could be sentenced to a maximum of 13 years in prison on the lesser conviction.

The Feb. 19, 1986, crime attracted international attention when it was disclosed that, a day before the shooting, Oscar Salvatierra had received a letter threatening him with death because of his 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.

Planned Killing for Weeks

During the three-week trial, Arnel Salvatierra admitted that he planned the killing for weeks before shooting his father in the head while the elder Salvatierra lay sleeping in the family’s north Glendale home.

But Arnel Salvatierra also told the jury that his father was a tyrant who had physically and mentally abused him for years. In the months before the shooting, he said, his father bought a shotgun and repeatedly threatened to “blow the heads off” his entire family.

Salvatierra, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, said he finally decided to kill his father because he feared that his father would kill him over his failing grades at Glendale High School.

Prosecutors contended, however, that Arnel Salvatierra was motivated not by fear but by anger over his father’s efforts to force an end to his relationship with a girlfriend, Teressa K. DeBurger. DeBurger, 21, faces a January trial on a charge of being an accessory after the fact to the slaying.

Believed He Was in Danger

But in instructions to the jury Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Gilbert Alston said the panel members could convict Salvatierra of voluntary manslaughter if they were convinced that he believed he was in danger.

After their verdict, jurors said they believed that the younger Salvatierra faced no imminent danger when he killed his father. After years of abuse, however, the son thought his father would kill him, they said.

“As an individual, I felt probably that he was not in such a life-threatening position,” jury foreman Kenneth Zerbel said. “But you have to go inside what he was thinking, and we feel that it was not unreasonable for him to believe that he was in an imminent life-threatening situation.”

‘Plain Emotion’

Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Wondries said the jury based its decision on “plain emotion.”

In her closing statement Tuesday, the prosecutor had argued that evidence in the case demonstrated that the killing was premeditated murder.

“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.”

Shortly after the verdict was announced, Alston ordered Salvatierra released on his own recognizance. The defendant had been in custody since the day after the shooting.

No sentencing date has been set.