Testimony of Hired Killer Is Questioned

Defense attorneys Wednesday sought to discredit the testimony of a key prosecution witness in the trial of a former Orange Glen High School teacher’s aide accused of hiring two teen-agers to kill her estranged husband.

Isaac Hill, who testified in Vista Superior Court on Tuesday that he and a friend repeatedly stabbed Robert (Wayne) Pearce on Jan. 31, 1989, gave a different account of the days before and after the killing than the one he gave at the preliminary hearing in April.

Hill and Anthony Pilato, both 16, have already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and have been sentenced to the California Youth Authority until their 25th birthdays, when they will be eligible for parole.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney William Fletcher on Wednesday, Hill conceded that he incorrectly remembered the date on which Roberta Pearce rented a car for him and Pilato to use during a failed attempt to kill Wayne Pearce. They drove the car to the man’s Cardiff apartment, but got no answer when they knocked on the door. Hill also contradicted himself on who was with him when he first met Roberta Pearce several weeks before the murder, and on the dates on which she allegedly offered money and cars to him and Pilato if they would kill her husband.

When Fletcher asked Hill why he changed his testimony, Hill repeatedly answered that Pilato, with whom he had spent time in Juvenile Hall, had “refreshed my memory.”

Roberta Pearce, 42, a former teacher’s aide at Orange Glen High School in Escondido, is charged with first-degree murder and could be sentenced to death if convicted. Both Pilato and Hill were students at Orange Glen at the time of the slaying.

Under re-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly, Hill reaffirmed that Pearce had offered them money to kill her husband. Hill said she first offered them $3,000 on Jan. 22, then $6,000 the next day, then $10,000 one or two days afterward, and finally $100,000 a couple of nights later--half of her husband’s $200,000 life insurance policy.

“What was it about reaching the $100,000 figure that caused you to change your mind?” Casserly asked.

“Up until then, all I had been influenced by was drugs, sex and money,” Hill said.

He also said Pearce supplied him with drugs and alcohol between the time they first met Jan. 20 and the day of the killing. On one occasion, he and Roberta Pearce engaged in oral copulation, Hill testified.

Hill and Pilato attacked Wayne Pearce as he was walking to his car. After repeatedly stabbing and beating him, the youths fled. Pearce, however, was not dead, and struggled back into his apartment. He was taken to Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, where he died.

During testimony earlier in the day, Pamela Hochstein, who shared an apartment with Wayne Pearce and his girlfriend, said she was the first person to see him after the predawn attack.

“Wayne was lying in the hallway, and he was all bloody. He said that two guys jumped him and tried to kill him,” Hochstein said. “There was a knife lying by his head, and he had lifted up his shirt, and I could see stab wounds in his stomach.”

The bloodied ax and knife used by Hill and Pilato were submitted as evidence Wednesday.

Casserly said Pilato will probably begin testifying today.