Man Pleads Guilty to Reduced Charges in Benefactor’s Slaying

A 25-year-old Arleta man pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Tuesday shortly before his trial was to begin on charges that he killed an elderly woman who took him into her home as an act of kindness.

Under a plea bargain offered by prosecutors, Marshall Louis Deerwester will be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for killing Retha Pauline Terry by giving her a fatal overdose of pain medication in her Arleta home on Oct. 11, 1987.

Prosecutors believe Deerwester killed Terry so she could not write him out of her will. In August, 1986, Terry named Deerwester the sole recipient of her $150,000 estate. On the afternoon she died, she told a friend she wanted to change her will to leave the estate to her church.

Deerwester met Terry at the First Baptist Church of Arleta in the spring of 1985 when he was living in a van in the Hansen Dam Recreation Area. Terry, who was recovering from a foot injury, agreed to let him live in her house in exchange for doing chores, running errands and driving her around town.

Attorneys on both sides say that the arrangement of convenience gradually grew into more, and that Deerwester came to consider Terry as a second mother.

Deerwester was originally charged in San Fernando Superior Court with first-degree murder with the special allegations of killing for financial gain and using poison. If he had been convicted of that charge, he would have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Deerwester had admitted in a tape-recorded confession that he gave Terry pain pills on the afternoon of her death. He said he did so because she was in tremendous pain from a variety of maladies, and he believed she wished to die and end her suffering.

Terry was overweight and had diabetes, a kidney problem and a bad foot. She took numerous pills each day to combat the problems, witnesses said. In his confession, Deerwester said Terry, an active member of her church, wanted to commit suicide but was afraid to do so because it was a sin.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig R. Richman said prosecutors offered Deerwester a plea bargain because jurors probably would have believed his claim that he had helped her commit suicide.

When he was a young boy, Deerwester’s mother died after a long battle with cancer, according to attorneys for both sides. His father died of leukemia several years later--while Deerwester was still a teen-ager, they said. Those facts, Richman said, would have given credibility to Deerwester’s statement that he believed that what he was doing was right.

“It’s not like we have to worry about him hitting the streets again, to commit more crimes,” he said. Deerwester is an ex-Marine with no prior criminal record.

Deputy Public Defender Tim Murphy said Deerwester accepted the plea offer because “he’s not a gambling person” and did not want to risk a lifetime prison term.

Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 22.