Convicted Marine Tells His Version of Wife’s Murder

Sgt. Joseph L. Thomas, convicted of murder and sentenced to death during a court-martial last October, gave his first public version of his pregnant wife’s death in court documents filed Thursday, denying that he killed her with a tire iron in their Tustin apartment.

Thomas never testified during his trial at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, and he told The Times that he wanted to take the stand but that his military defense lawyers would not let him. A jury of officers and enlisted men found Thomas guilty of premeditated murder.

The 29-year-old Thomas is on death row at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. His case is being appealed to the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Military Review.

In documents filed for a civil case in Orange County Superior Court, Thomas said that he had been wrongfully convicted of the Dec. 10, 1987, murder of his wife and that Mitcheal N. Nelson, 24, who was granted immunity to testify against Thomas, killed her in the Thomases’ apartment on the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. Thomas also charged in his declaration that Nelson, then a Marine corporal, and Thomas’ next door neighbor, Antoinette Deluz, drove on Ortega Highway with Melinda J. Thomas’ body, placed it in Thomas’ Suzuki Samurai, pushed it over an embankment and set the Samurai afire.

Thomas does not explain how he knows what happened at the side of the highway.

Deluz said she would not comment on the Thomas matter. “I have received numerous calls since the trial,” she said, “and I will be polite and just say I have no comment.”

No one answered Nelson’s telephone in St. Louis.

The documents filed by Thomas’ civilian lawyer, John R. Alcorn of Laguna Hills, claim that Thomas, Deluz, Nelson and Thomas’ daughter, then 3 years old, were all at Thomas’ apartment when his wife was clubbed unconscious. During the trial, Nelson testified that he watched Thomas hit his wife numerous times with a tire iron, describing in detail how the murder was committed. Nelson said he tried and failed to stop Thomas.

Deluz testified that she talked to Nelson and Thomas outside the apartment the night of the murder, but no one ever testified that she was inside the house or that she helped dispose of the body. Nelson, who is no longer in the Marine Corps, testified that he and Thomas took Melinda Thomas’ body up the Ortega Highway, Nelson driving the car with the body in the trunk and Thomas driving the Suzuki. Nelson told the jury that he was the one who walked down the embankment and torched the vehicle.

The bizarre murder case took many turns, including testimony that Thomas’ wife had worked as a confidential informant in narcotics cases for the Navy Intelligence Service, the agency that investigated Thomas for murder.

The autopsy showed that Melinda Thomas was 4 months pregnant. She also had traces of cocaine in her blood.

Alcorn said he believes Thomas’ latest account of what happened that night. Also, he said, a polygraph examiner who tested Thomas on March 23 at the brig at Camp Pendleton agreed with Alcorn’s conclusion.

Thomas had flunked a previous polygraph examination administered by the defense in June, 1988. Alcorn said Thomas at that point was claiming that he was not at his apartment but that he had spent the evening at Nelson’s apartment off base in Santa Ana.

Suit by Insurance Company

The Thomas declaration was part of a suit filed by Academy Life Insurance Co., a Colorado firm that placed $50,000 in a court-controlled trust from a life insurance policy on Melinda Thomas. The policy was held by Thomas, and military prosecutors said it was a primary motive for the slaying.

Thomas said in the declaration that he did not want the insurance money but that he wanted it to go to his daughter, Mary, 5, who is living with her mother, Thomas’ first wife, in Florida.

In his declaration, Thomas said: “Melinda J. Thomas was murdered in our bedroom at our home at 3207-A Link St., Irvine, Calif. on the night of Dec. 9, 1987, or in the early morning hours of Dec. 10, 1987 by Mitcheal N. Nelson.”

The declaration claimed that his wife, Melinda, Deluz and Nelson had “all consumed large amounts of both alcohol and cocaine” shortly before Melinda died.

“At the time Mitcheal N. Nelson and Antoinette Deluz began murdering my wife, I was in the bedroom of my daughter, Mary E. Thomas, and Mitcheal N. Nelson and Antoinette Deluz were with my wife Melinda J. Thomas in Melinda and my master bedroom,” the court documents said.

While he was in the bedroom, Thomas said, he heard Deluz say it was “time to teach this bitch a lesson.”

“I immediately heard the noise of an impact or blow,” his declaration said. “I rushed into my bedroom and saw Melinda J. Thomas’ body, either comatose or possibly dead, on our bed. I saw Mitcheal N. Nelson standing next to the bed holding a clublike fishing gaff, approximately 3 feet in length.”

No Weapon Ever Found

Authorities never found either a tire iron or fishing gaff.

Thomas said Nelson and Deluz, who was living in the military housing while her husband was on a tour of duty overseas, told him that he and his daughter should go with Nelson to his Santa Ana apartment.

“I honestly do not know if Melinda J. Thomas was dead or alive at the time I saw her lying on the bed,” Thomas said in his declaration.

He said he spent the rest of the night at Nelson’s apartment. Nelson, he said, left shortly after dropping Thomas off with his daughter.

Thomas claims that he spent the night at Nelson’s apartment. After catching a ride back to his apartment the following morning, “I was approached by Antoinette Deluz who claimed to me that Melinda J. Thomas had taken the jeep and left during the night.”

According to the declaration, Thomas said Deluz claimed that Melinda had “driven to Riverside County area to purchase narcotics from several possible suspected different individuals.”

Thomas said he concluded that his wife’s death was a suicide because of her suicide threats, use of cocaine and a note purportedly written by her and left at the house.

Wife Struck During Struggle

In an expanded account of what happened that evening of Melinda’s death, Thomas told The Times that his wife had become angry with him earlier that evening and had come after him with the fish gaff, swinging it wildly. Thomas, in a written account, said that during a struggle to wrestle the gaff from his wife, she was inadvertently struck with the wooden handle part of the fish gaff. Thomas said she was struck in or above the right eye.

After the blow, which Thomas said was not hard enough to knock her out, his wife fell backwards toward the bed. He said Nelson took the fishing gaff from him and Thomas grabbed his small daughter and ran into her bedroom.

Moments later, he said, he heard the impact or blow.