Man Found Guilty in Deaths of 2 Officers

A makeup artist was convicted Tuesday of murder in the 1986 deaths of two Los Angeles Police Department explosives experts killed while trying to defuse a pipe bomb found in his North Hollywood garage.

A San Fernando Superior Court jury deliberated for five hours before convicting Donald Lee Morse, 39, of murder in the Feb. 8, 1986, deaths of Detective Arleigh McCree, 46, and Officer Ronald Ball, 43. Jurors said they had understood, but rejected, oblique hints by the defense that the officers had caused their own deaths by careless handling of the bomb.

Several members of the victims’ families greeted the verdict with brief cheers and clapping, while a murmur of anger ran through a group of Morse’s family and friends.

As he had throughout the four-week trial, the immaculately groomed television and film makeup artist remained composed, smiling weakly at one point, as the jury rendered its verdict of guilty on two counts of murder and one of possessing explosives.

Morse did not testify at the trial but told police at the time of the explosion that he had never seen the two bombs found in his garage and had allowed others to use his garage for storage.

Judge John H. Majors set May 3 for sentencing. Since jurors convicted Morse of special circumstances in addition to the murder counts, he could be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

‘Optimistic About Appeal’

No evidence was introduced in the trial suggesting why Morse would build and store bombs in his garage.

After the verdict, defense attorney Bernard J. Rosen said he was “very, very optimistic about an appeal” on grounds that the defense was hobbled by Majors’ refusal to allow introduction of evidence suggesting that the officers, the first Los Angeles bomb squad members to be killed in the line of duty, had caused their own deaths through carelessness.

In disallowing such evidence, Majors said that state law does not permit a victim’s negligence to be used as a murder defense unless such errors are the sole cause of death.

Since the bomb was an illegal and deadly device, its possession was at least a contributing cause to the officers’ deaths, Majors ruled.

Jurors said they picked up Rosen’s frequent suggestions--usually couched in questions that the judge promptly ruled out of order--that the officers caused their own deaths, possibly by touching pliers to the positive and negative wires leading from the device.

“We knew what he was hinting at, but it wasn’t a factor at all,” said one juror, a 37-year-old salesman from Sylmar, who asked that his name not be used. “The bomb was built to kill, and he had the bomb, so we felt that if the officers made a mistake, it just wasn’t important.”

Edie McCree, widow of the detective, said defense suggestions that the officers were negligent by not exploding the bomb at a remote location were “a bit hard to take” for herself and other family members who attended every day of the trial.

She said her husband “always tried to preserve the evidence.”

“He always thought it was most important to convict the bomb maker,” especially in a case where the suspect denies that it is his bomb, she said.

McCree noted that by dismantling the first bomb, her husband and Ball had preserved evidence that was “important in getting this conviction.”

Police Testimony

Juror Virginia Murray said the panel was largely persuaded of Morse’s guilt by police testimony that they found blasting powder hidden inside a coffee can in a kitchen cabinet and that Morse had a copy of a bomb-making manual in his library.

Police experts testified that the defendant’s fingerprints were on the coffee can and the manual.

“Without those prints, it would have been a really tough case to decide,” Murray said.

Another juror noted that Morse had “the makings of a whole other bomb” scattered inside his house.

Jurors said that after five hours of discussing the evidence, they took a vote late Monday and it was unanimous for conviction on all three counts. The verdict was sealed until Tuesday.

Alvin Morse, the defendant’s 37-year-old brother who lived with him at the time of the blast, said that he and his brother “have no idea how the bomb got in that garage” and never saw the bomb manual before.

He cooked dinner the night before the blast, Alvin Morse said, “and I know there was no blasting powder in that kitchen cabinet.”

“The police were in that house for hours after the explosion, and they could have planted anything in that house,” he said.

The younger Morse, a nightclub singer, said that fingerprints, including one of his prints that police said they found on the bomb manual, “must have been transferred there.”

Alvin Morse also said that police had “been after my brother for years on trumped-up charges,” including arrests for rape and credit card fraud that were dismissed.

Police said they went to Morse’s home to search for a pistol that had been used four days earlier to shoot an official of the Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Union, Local 706, of which Morse was a member. The pistol was not found and Morse was not charged in the shooting.

After the verdict, Rosen argued that Majors should have granted a defense motion for a change of venue. The defense lawyer contended that Morse, who is black, could not get a fair trial from an all-white jury in the San Fernando Valley, “where there are values that are different from values in other areas.”

Rosen declined to be more specific. But Morse’s friends and relatives have complained throughout the trial that the defendant was being denied justice because of his race.