Van Nuys Man Gets 6-Year Term for Killing Boss

A longtime employee of a Canoga Park janitorial service was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison and fined $100 for shooting his boss to death after an argument last July.

After hearing pleas from the victim’s family for a harsh sentence and requests from the killer’s supporters for leniency, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Raymond Mireles gave Richard W. Bullinger a sentence between the two extremes.

Bullinger, 33, of Van Nuys, pleaded guilty Sept. 14 to voluntary manslaughter in the July 27 death of Robert D. Norris, owner of Bob’s Janitorial Service. Norris was shot once in the chest at his Van Nuys home. Bullinger later surrendered to police and admitted the shooting.

Norris and Bullinger had “a mutual kind of bizarre relationship that went on for years, where there’s drinking, fighting and shouting,” Mireles said before pronouncing sentence.

Moton Holt, Bullinger’s attorney, had asked Mireles to sentence his client to a low term of four years, citing his client’s 12 years of employment and lack of a prior criminal record, except for two traffic offenses. He gave the judge letters praising Bullinger’s diligence and honesty from doctors, lawyers and others for whom Bullinger had worked as a janitor.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eduards R. Abele had asked for a high term of 13 years, arguing that “the bottom line in this case is that a person’s life was taken unjustifiably.”

Before sentence was pronounced, Bullinger testified that he went to Norris’ house to quit his job because Norris had accused him of stealing money. He said Norris was drunk, and he shot Norris in self-defense after he attacked Bullinger with a carpet-cleaning tool, threatening to kill him. Bullinger said he had purchased the gun two days earlier because he frequently worked nights in dangerous neighborhoods.

Bullinger was originally charged with murder but was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge because prosecutors lacked evidence of the premeditation required for a murder conviction, prosecutors said.

“He’s getting away with murder,” Elfreda Norris, the slain man’s mother, said outside court before the sentencing.