Pair to Stand Trial in Woman’s Fall From Big Sur Cliff

Virginia Agnes Rearden and her ex-husband Billie Joe (Mark) McGinnis were bound over for trial Wednesday in the death of a woman who fell from a Big Sur cliff in 1987.

The pair are accused of murdering Deanna Hubbard Wild, 20, to collect on a $35,000 life insurance policy that Rearden took out on Wild on April 1, 1987, the day before she died.

McGinnis, 50, and Rearden, 53, were married at the time of Wild’s death but have since divorced.

Ending three days of testimony in the preliminary hearing, Municipal Judge Nicholas Kasimatis said that certain acts allegedly committed by the defendants “do more than raise the court’s suspicions concerning the defendants’ complicity in (this) very terrible, premeditated murder.”

McGinnis and Rearden are charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The pair, who are being held in lieu of $500,000 bail each, will be bound over to Superior Court for trial March 14. They were arrested in September in Northern California.

The case against the couple is based on circumstantial evidence:

* The insurance policy named Rearden’s son, James Coates, the beneficiary and Rearden as the secondary beneficiary.

* At the time of Wild’s death, the couple were asked by a Monterey County deputy coroner whether they knew about any life insurance Wild may have had. They said they did not know of any. But, after Wild’s death, Rearden filed a claim with State Farm Insurance, and affidavits indicate she had paid for the policy the day before Wild’s death.