Teen Tells of Killing School Aide’s Husband

Speaking slowly and matter-of-factly, a 16-year-old Escondido boy testified to a spellbound Vista courtroom Tuesday how he and a friend stabbed Robert (Wayne) Pearce to death outside his Cardiff apartment 13 months ago--after they had been promised a share of Pearce’s $200,000 life insurance policy by Pearce’s estranged wife.

Isaac Hill, who already has pleaded guilty in Juvenile Court to first-degree murder, said he was asked by Roberta Pearce to kill her husband, and that she was angry when he returned to her Valley Center home after the stabbing because Robert Pearce was still alive when airlifted to Palomar Medical Center.

“I said we had done it, we had killed Mr. Pearce,” Hill said. “She said the hospital had called that he was alive, and that they wanted her at the hospital.

“She was mad. She said, ‘He’s not dead and you’re not going to have the opportunity to do it again,’ ” Hill said. “She mentioned she’d have to play a role” at the hospital.

Hill’s testimony in Superior Court Judge Franklin Mitchell’s courtroom was clearly the most dramatic in the opening day of the trial. Other witnesses told of how, based on the trail of blood, mortally wounded Robert Pearce--stabbed more than 20 times with a knife and a hatchet--clearly struggled from the parking lot to his third-floor apartment, where he finally collapsed in a pool of blood, his stomach ripped open from the attack and the knife still lodged in his back.

David Brandsen testified that he watched part of the attack from his second-story apartment window as Pearce was pummeled by the two assailants. The second attacker, Anthony Pilato, also has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and both he and Hill have been sentenced to the California Youth Authority until their 25th birthdays.

“I was awakened at about 5:45 by the sounds of a man being hit. I could hear the thuds of him being hit,” Brandsen said. “The man was in the fetal position . . . and one man was standing over his head--with one foot on either side of his head, bent down and beating him, and another man with one foot on each side of his legs was doing the same thing.

“The man couldn’t do anything. Their (the assailants’) hands were going as fast as they could,” Brandsen said.

Roberta Pearce, 42, a former teacher’s aide at Orange Glen High School in Escondido, is charged with first-degree murder and faces the death penalty if convicted because of alleged special circumstances of killing for financial gain and lying in wait. Both Pilato and Hill were students at Orange Glen High School at the time of the slaying.

Defense attorney William Fletcher told the jury during his opening statement Tuesday that Pearce would testify on her own behalf. Fletcher argued that the two boys, both 15 at the time, decided on their own to kill Robert Pearce because of their own perception that Roberta Pearce wanted him dead so she wouldn’t lose the couple’s Valley Center home in divorce proceedings.

“The evidence will show that Anthony Pilato and Isaac Hill are not only killers, they are liars,” Fletcher said of the two teens’ laying blame on his client. He argued, too, that Hill had offered several explanations to Sheriff’s Department investigators after the killing and that the two teens ultimately decided to blame Roberta Pearce in order to protect themselves.

Hill and Pilato were put up to the killing by a 16-year-old girl who lived with Roberta Pearce and who feared she would no longer be able to live with the woman if she lost her house in the pending divorce, Fletcher contended. The girl has not been charged in the crime.

Roberta Pearce was “stunned” that her 14-year marriage was ending and that her husband had moved in with a younger woman in Cardiff, Fletcher said. But after allowing her sprawling home to be used as a hangout for the 16-year-old housemate’s friends, she demanded that they leave. They refused, he said--and instead, on Jan. 31, 1989, her husband was killed by Pilato and Hill.

“She’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that she did not solicit, conspire or in any way encourage the death of Mr. Robert Pearce,” Fletcher said.

Hill, however, painted a decidedly different picture during his 75 minutes on the stand, and constantly referred to the defendant--who was dressed Tuesday in a navy blue, belted dress with a maroon-and-tan scarf draped over her left shoulder--as “Miss Pearce.”

Hill testified that he first met Roberta Pearce about two weeks before the killing, when she drove him and Pilato first to her husband’s place of work--a construction company in Vista--then to his apartment in Cardiff, where they cased the layout of the building.

Hill said the meeting was set up by Pilato. “I asked, ‘Why?’ He said she wanted us to do a job. I didn’t know what the job was,” Hill said.

Roberta Pearce befriended him and Pilato, he said, picking them up from their homes in Escondido and having them spend days and evenings at her Valley Center home with the 16-year-old girl, where they watched television and played with her dog.

Finally one day, he said, he and Pilato were invited by Roberta Pearce into her bedroom “and that’s when she asked me if I wanted to kill her husband. She asked me whether or not I wanted to make some money. I said, ‘Yes.’ She said we’d have to kill her husband,” Hill said. “Anthony already knew about it.

“She said we’d get $3,000 apiece. I said, ‘No,’ ” he testified. Roberta Pearce explained to him, Hill said, that the killing had to be done by March 1, when the divorce was going to be final. The next day, Hill testified, she upped the offer to $6,000--and he again declined. “I wasn’t taking her seriously at the time,” he said. “I wasn’t facing reality. I didn’t really think she meant what she was saying.”

The next night, the offer was raised to $10,000, he said--and he again refused.

“The next day, she asked whether or not we’d do it for $100,000--50,000 thousand apiece,” he said. “I told her I’d do it. She told us we could use a gun--her grandpa’s gun--that she had there.”

Hill said Pearce suggested he and Pilato kill Robert Pearce that very night, when he was expected to go to a party and might return drunk, but they didn’t.

Finally, in the hours after midnight on Jan. 31, Hill, Pilato, Pearce, Frank Rodriguez--another teen-ager who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder--the 16-year-old girl and another teen-ager met at Roberta Pearce’s home.

At that time, Hill said, Roberta Pearce decided the gun shouldn’t be used because it could be traced back to her and because “she didn’t think it would do the job.”

“We said we’d use kitchen knives,” Hill said. “We got them out and cleaned them off. She cleaned them, too. We used towels. That was my idea. I told her we’d use gloves and I didn’t want any fingerprints. We put them in a plastic bag.”

The group decided that Hill and Pilato would steal a car in Escondido to drive to Cardiff, because Pearce didn’t want her blue Lincoln spotted. On their way to the car in the garage, Hill said, he picked up a hand ax commonly used in the construction trade.

“Me and Tony were going to drive the (stolen Toyota) truck, and Soddy (Rodriguez) and (the other teen-ager) were going to drive Miss Pearce’s car to the Carlsbad mall, and meet us there. That was my idea, too,” Hill said.

During his testimony, Roberta Pearce sat impassively, occasionally cupping her chin in her left hand.

The four teens first drove to Escondido and tried unsuccessfully to steal a sports car. They took the car’s radio and instead stole the Toyota pickup.

Hill said he and Pilato arrived at Robert Pearce’s apartment complex after 5 a.m., and parked their vehicle backward alongside Pearce’s, driver’s door to driver’s door.

A few minutes later, he said, Robert Pearce walked out of the apartment building and toward the vehicle in the pre-dawn darkness. “I asked him the time. He looked at his watch. I was inside the driver’s side, and the door was slightly open,” Hill testified.

“I had the two knives. Anthony had the hatchet. He (Pilato) had already stepped out of the truck. He’d gone around so that way Mr. Pearce wouldn’t have anywhere to run.

“I stepped out of the truck. I attempted to slash his throat. Anthony hit him with the hatchet, and that’s when all the struggling started. We were between the two trucks. He (Pearce) hit me and I started to stab him.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly asked Hill if he knew how many times he struck Pearce. “No,” Hill said. “More than once?” Casserly asked. “Yes,” Hill said. “And Anthony almost hit me.”

Roberta Pearce, now appearing to be quietly crying, dipped her head into her hands as she listened, and clutched a tissue.

Hill said he and Pilato “had gotten enough” and ran toward their vehicle, but that he stopped midway and went part of the way back to Pearce, lying in the grass, to retrieve the knife. But, “I didn’t touch him,” Hill said. “For some reason, I stopped and ran back to the truck.”

When they drove away, Hill said, Pearce was on his knees, moaning.

The two reconnected with the other two boys at the shopping center in Carlsbad. “We were going to take the Toyota back to Escondido, but it didn’t have enough gas,” Hill said. Instead, they all piled into the Lincoln and drove back to the Valley Center home, where they took off their bloodied clothes and put on fresh ones.

It was then, Hill said, that Pearce announced that her husband was taken alive to the hospital and she chastised them for not killing him.

Hill’s testimony will continue today.

Another of the day’s witnesses was Frances Sieverding, a family friend of Robert Pearce, who said she called Roberta Pierce about 6:40 a.m. on the day of the killing to notify her that her husband had been stabbed. Roberta Pearce didn’t get to the hospital until about 2 1/2 hours later, she said.