Wife of Man Slain in Burglary Identifies 2 Men as Assailants

A 69-year-old woman Tuesday tentatively identified two Los Angeles men as the intruders who crashed through a sliding-glass door of her Woodland Hills home and shot her husband to death during a burglary last year.

Testifying at the Van Nuys Superior Court trial of her husband’s accused killers, Devin Marcel Feagin and Terrill Ross, Faye King cried as she described finding her husband, Howard David King, 67, bleeding on the floor of their bedroom the night of April 29, 1988. He had been shot once in the chest.

Feagin, 21, and Ross, 19, are both charged with first-degree murder, residential burglary and robbery in the April 29, 1988, killing.

King testified that she was calling friends to arrange a bridge game at about 8:30 p.m., when she heard the first of two knocks on her front door. Attributing the knocks to salesmen, King ignored them, but after a third knock she awoke her husband, who had gone to bed early, she testified. He went back to bed after looking out a window and not seeing anyone, King testified.

Moments later, two men, both carrying guns, crashed into the house, King testified. One of the men went into the bedroom where her husband was sleeping, while the other man forced her to lie on the kitchen floor.

King said she heard a gunshot from the bedroom, and the taller of the two men, whom she identified as Feagin, came running out of the bedroom, clenching money. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she quoted him as telling the other man, whom she identified as Ross.

Because the murder occurred during the commission of another crime, the charges against Feagin carry a special-circumstance allegation that could result in the death penalty if he is convicted. Because Ross was a juvenile at the time, the law precludes him from being put to death if convicted.