Murder-Trial Witness Is a Changed Man

Bruce Van Arsdell, a sergeant in the Marine Corps, looks like a model for a recruitment poster: broad shoulders, narrow waist, perfect military haircut. He says “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” to questions put to him.

But Van Arsdell, 31, a key witness this week in the Thomas Maniscalco trial involving a 10-year-old murder, once had another side to him. He admitted during testimony that, years ago, he was a drug dealer based in Laguna Beach, he floated counterfeit money from coast to coast and he participated in plans to poison someone.

Van Arsdell, who was on the witness stand for two days this week, is the second of the prosecution witnesses who lived at Maniscalco’s house the night that three people were slain in Westminster on Memorial Day weekend, 1980.

The first of the witnesses, Robert Robbins, told the jurors that he was with Maniscalco and two others when they killed Richard (Rabbit) Rizzone and two people with him, including a young woman who was raped.

Van Arsdell helped corroborate Robbins’ testimony by describing the actions of Maniscalco and the others when they returned to the house that night: Maniscalco had gloves in his back pocket (Robbins said all the killers wore gloves), and he had the keys to Rizzone’s car. Van Arsdell said the group also had Rizzone’s motorcycle.

He said Maniscalco ordered him to search the car and get rid of it, but to be sure to wear gloves. Later, when he reported back to Maniscalco, Van Arsdell testified, Maniscalco asked him, “Did you use the gloves? Because if you didn’t, we’re screwed.”

Van Arsdell provided other testimony damaging to the defense: that Maniscalco masterminded an attempt to poison Rizzone, and that Maniscalco once talked about what the group would do “after Rabbit has his accident.” Van Arsdell also indicated that Maniscalco was director of the group’s counterfeiting operation.

Van Arsdell today presents a sharp contrast to the 10-year-old picture of him on a bulletin board of mug shots that stood just a few feet from the witness stand in Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary’s courtroom this week. In the picture--part of the prosecution’s gallery of key players in the case--Van Arsdell is unkempt, with long, scraggly hair and a glassy-eyed look, just like most of the others depicted on the board.

But what happened to Van Arsdell after the group split up was remarkable.

Of all the witnesses, Van Arsdell was the hardest to track down. It took four years for investigators to discover that he had joined the Marine Corps; he said it was an attempt to straighten out his life. He has been in the service more than six years and is planning a military career.

But during cross-examination this week, defense attorney Joanne Harrold hit hard at Van Arsdell’s past life. She made him explain in detail the period after his teen-age years, when he was taking and selling drugs, “anything I could get my hands on,” he said.

Harrold also made sure that jurors learned that Van Arsdell is testifying under immunity from prosecution for his admitted past crimes. Isn’t Van Arsdell in court because “you’re looking out for No. 1?” she asked him.

“No, ma’am,” he answered. “That’s not why I decided to talk to the authorities.”

Maniscalco has maintained his innocence in numerous news media interviews. It is Harrold’s contention that Robbins and Van Arsdell were part of a group that was responsible for the Westminster murders. She says they planned to make Maniscalco the fall guy.

Every phase of the Maniscalco case has been painstakingly long. It was four years before Maniscalco, himself a lawyer and now 45, and an acquaintance, Daniel Duffy, 46, were arrested. It took another five years to get Maniscalco to trial; Duffy’s trial is scheduled to follow. And it has taken Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King three months to present his case, which includes a broad picture of Maniscalco as the leader of a small commune of criminals who did his illegal bidding. The transcript of the trial and pretrial hearings already takes up more than 30,000 pages.

King is expected to take about two more weeks to conclude his case. After that, the question is whether or not the defense will put Maniscalco on the witness stand.

Harrold said Wednesday that that decision has not been made yet.