Survivor of Attack Tells Jury of Being Amazed to Be Alive

With four gunshot wounds to her torso, Pauline Terry crawled down her hallway to the television room, where she found her husband fatally shot in the head. She crawled to the telephone in the kitchen and dialed 911.

“I was just amazed that I was alive,” she testified Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court during the second day of trial for Richard L. Rodriguez, 22. He is accused of being hired by the Terrys’ only son, David John Terry, to kill the couple. Both men are charged with murder and attempted murder. David John Terry’s trial is to begin this summer.

Pauline Terry, 52, of Anaheim, who was an instructional aide at Riverdale Elementary School in Orange, identified her assailant in court Wednesday as Rodriguez, saying, “I will never forget his eyes . . . they had so much anger and hate--wild.”

Rodriguez listened calmly as Terry described the night of Nov. 28, 1988, when 56-year-old Owen L. Terry was killed and she was left for dead.

“I walked in the house about 7:15 p.m. ‘Wheel of Fortune’ was already on. My husband was already in his pajamas and slippers. We religiously watch ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and ‘Jeopardy,’ ” she said. “(Owen) had dozed off. He put his recliner chair down and had our cat on his lap. He was really tired because it was his first long day (back to work).

“When I got up (from the couch) to get our clothes from the dryer and put it in the guest bedroom, I heard a terrible bang. I came back to check on Owen and I saw (the assailant) standing there with a gun. He was in the hallway. I saw his face and I saw the gun,” she said with a cracking voice.

“I felt something hit me. He kept shooting and walking toward me. I fell down . . . I pretended to lay dead,” she said while wiping away her tears. “I felt him rush by to the master bedroom and I felt him rush back by me.”

While paramedics responded to Terry’s call, police began their search for the attacker with helicopters and police dogs. The attacker allegedly ran with Pauline Terry’s jewelry box through the field next to a hospital and through neighboring yards, dropping a trail of rings and earrings. Rodriguez was caught hiding in bushes by a police dog--the gun apparently used in the murder lay partly buried in grass nearby, authorities said.

The Terrys’ adopted son, David, 19, had dropped out of Canyon High School in Anaheim eight months earlier and had run away from home, traveling the country. In Tennessee, his mother testified, he met a girl named April, and wanted to stay there with her. But he returned home two months before the slaying after his parents broke up the affair. Terry said she and her husband had acted to end that relationship because the girl was a runaway and was too young to be away from home.

Terry and her husband, who was an accountant, thought everything was going well after that, she testified. David Terry began working for Domino’s Pizza, and they co-signed for a Toyota pickup truck for him so he could make his deliveries.

“He was very excited, making good tips and enjoying his job. He was spending a lot of evenings with his friends,” she testified. “Then we found out that April had returned” to their son’s life, she added.

Jason Hoops, an acquaintance of David Terry, told the jurors that David had asked him at least three times to kill his parents. Hoops testified that he spent most of Nov. 28, 1988, riding with David Terry and that they smoked marijuana. David Terry had also been drinking with his other friends, Hoops said. He said David Terry asked another teen-age friend to kill his parents, and that friend refused. Hoops said Rodriguez and David Terry struck a deal. Rodriguez would make off with as much jewelry as he could get and David Terry would pay him $3,500 for the murder. David Terry provided the gun, Hoops said.

Rodriguez is also charged with armed robbery and burglary. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

David Terry is being held in Orange County Jail.