Slain Man’s Companion Says Wife Threatened Her : Testimony: A dead millionaire’s longtime female friend says his wife, who is charged in his death, said she’d kill her and her children.

A Tarzana woman, who told police she shot her millionaire husband to death because she mistook him for a burglar, once threatened to kill her husband’s longtime female companion, the companion testified Tuesday.

Louise Danielle of Moorpark testified at a preliminary hearing for Carole Evelyn Mellinger, who has been charged with murder in the slaying of Brainerd Lee Mellinger, the millionaire owner of a Woodland Hills import-export business.

Carole Mellinger’s attorney asked Danielle several times whether she was Brainerd Mellinger’s mistress. She replied that they were close friends.

Danielle said she was threatened by Carole Mellinger two years after she began a 12-year relationship with Brainerd Mellinger. Carole Mellinger also threatened to kill Danielle’s children and said she couldn’t wait for Brainerd Mellinger to get old so she could put him in a home for the aged and buy a Rolls-Royce, Danielle testified.

But Danielle testified that her relationship with Brainerd Mellinger continued and that she had dinner with him at a Calabasas restaurant on Jan. 24, less than an hour before he was shot to death in the den of his home in the 19700 block of Komar Drive.

After the brief hearing, Judge Aviva K. Bobb ruled that there was sufficient evidence to hold Carole Mellinger for trial. The 48-year-old defendant has pleaded not guilty to the charge in Municipal Court. She is free on $400,000 bail and awaiting an April 3 arraignment in Superior Court.

Prosecutors allege that Carole Mellinger shot her husband four times with a pistol and apparently attempted to use a shotgun to “finish him off” but did not know how to operate the safety.

In other testimony Tuesday, Los Angeles police Detective Larry Dolley said Carole Mellinger seemed to have been drinking when she was arrested shortly after the shooting but that she was aware of what was going on.

But outside of court, Tom Byrne, one of Carole Mellinger’s two attorneys, said “to call her ‘hammered’ would be more accurate.” Mellinger’s other attorney, Paul Caruso, added that Mellinger had a blood-alcohol content of 0.19% and 0.18% in two tests taken by police five to six hours after her arrest. Her blood-alcohol content at the time of the shooting therefore could have been as high as 0.3%, nearly four times the legal definition of intoxication, he said.

Caruso said Carole Mellinger did not expect her husband would be coming home the night of his death and mistook him for a prowler.