Boys’ Memories Falter in Pearce Murder Case

The second of two 15-year-old boys who have confessed to killing the husband of an Escondido teacher’s aide testified against the woman Thursday as her preliminary hearing on charges of first-degree murder continued in Vista Municipal Court.

But his testimony, and that of the other teen-ager who said he was solicited by the woman to kill her estranged husband, was laced with so many responses of “I don’t remember” and inconsistencies that the defense attorney said afterward that the case against his client is little more than “fantasy.”

William Fletcher, the attorney for Roberta Pearce, said after Thursday’s proceedings that he believes one of the day’s witnesses “cooked up” his testimony.

‘Giggling and Laughing’

“If you look at all these kids who are in here watching this, giggling and laughing, it’s like who’s going to be the big man on campus who beat the lawyer,” Fletcher said.

He was especially critical of the testimony offered by 18-year-old Jorge Velasquez, who said he was solicited twice by Pearce to kill Robert Wayne Pearce, a 40-year-old construction superintendent.

Velasquez, a special education student at Orange Glen High School who said he spent about two years in the classroom where Pearce was an aide, was especially vague in his testimony about the alleged request.

So frustrated were the attorneys that at the end of Velasquez’s testimony that Judge Suzanne Knauf questioned him herself, at one point asking him whether he could at least remember how he spent last Christmas. He said he couldn’t.

Said Fletcher afterward: “He’s emotionally incapable of remembering. If that’s the case, should someone be convicted for solicitation of murder if the witness can’t even remember what he did for Christmas?”

Outside the courtroom, Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly said the shortcomings in some of the testimony did not concern him.

Confident of Trial

“These are kids. They’re not smart kids to begin with. They don’t have great memories,” he said. But their testimony as a whole, he maintained, will be sufficient to have Pearce bound over for trial on murder charges in Superior Court.

Most of Thursday’s testimony was provided by Anthony Pilato, 15, who, along with Isaac Hill, also 15, confessed last Friday in Juvenile Court to fatally bludgeoning Robert Pearce on Jan. 31 outside his Cardiff apartment.

The two said they were to share $100,000 from a $200,000 life insurance policy and that each was to receive a car from Roberta Pearce.

Pilato said he consumed liquor, marijuana and methamphetamines in the hours before the killing, and slept in the car both on the way to Cardiff and on the way back to Pearce’s home in Valley Center.

He said he was brought into the scheme by a friend who said he would receive Pearce’s red Corvette if he killed her husband. He said he at first thought the idea was a joke.

Driving Tour

Asked by Fletcher who convinced him that Pearce seriously wanted her husband killed, Pilato answered, “Mrs. Pearce.”

Pilato said Pearce first drove him and Hill to the place where her husband worked in Vista and later to his apartment in Cardiff so they would know where they could find him, and also showed them pictures of her husband so they could identify him.

Pilato said that, on the morning of the killing, he, Hill and two other boys left Pearce’s home and that he and Hill then stole a pickup, which they drove to the Cardiff location. When Robert Pearce came out of the apartment and approached his own truck, Hill approached him from the front and Pilato approached from behind, Pilato said.

“I don’t remember what happened after that,” Pilato said. Under further questioning, he said he struck Pearce more than once and the man fought back. “I left. I was scared bad,” he said.