Man Testifies He Strangled His Date

A thin, silver-haired draftsman admitted at his own murder trial Tuesday that he strangled a mentally ill woman on their fifth date after his romantic advances prompted her to punch him.

Peter Michael Bergne, 46, testified that on Aug. 3, 1989, he gripped Linda Anderson’s neck for 45 to 60 seconds as she pummeled him in the front seat of his Cadillac. He let go when “I felt that she was calmed down and just in a state of partial unconsciousness,” he said.

Bergne dumped her body off Kerner Road in Simi Valley, where it was found the next morning: “I decided to leave Linda in a safe resting place by the side of the road,” he testified.

Bergne is a diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic, who spent six years in a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York during the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. However, a court hearing found him competent to stand trial.

During four hours of testimony in his Ventura County Superior Court trial on charges of murder and attempted rape, Bergne gave a rambling, self-contradictory account of the night of Anderson’s death. He twitched and fidgeted, often shooting glances at the jury through his glasses.

Bergne told jurors that he and Anderson dated four times after they first met at a McDonald’s in Woodland Hills on July 7.

Bergne said he was attracted to Anderson from the start. She once told him that a stormy marriage had left her frigid but didn’t rule out the possibility of making love with him some time in the future, he testified.

Bergne picked her up at BRIDGES Inc., a Canoga Park psychiatric care home where she lived, and they went out for meals and coffee, he said.

Their fifth and final date came on Aug. 3.

After dinner at a Burger King on Winnetka Avenue and dessert at a coffee shop, Bergne drove Anderson to a parking area near the corner of Nordhoff Street and Tampa Avenue, where they parked and smoked cigarettes, he testified.

“I felt that I wanted to show her some affection, and when I reached over to kiss her, she became violent with me,” Bergne said.

Bergne said Anderson punched him in the head repeatedly for about 10 seconds, before he grabbed her neck and jaw with his right hand and forced her back against the passenger door of the car.

“She started kicking back and kicking me with her feet,” he testified. “I told her to calm down and asked her, ‘Why are you getting so excited? Calm down.’ ”

When he believed that she was unconscious, he released his grip, then began driving her home, Bergne said. Fifteen minutes later he stopped at Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Nordhoff Street, found that she wasn’t breathing, and “went into a state of panic and shock.”

Bergne testified that he tried to revive Anderson using techniques he had learned in the Boy Scouts, pressing on her abdomen to build up pressure in her lungs.

When that failed, he set out for the Simi Valley Medical Center.

But en route, the Cadillac began overheating and Bergne pulled off the Simi Valley Freeway at Kerner Drive: “Being in a state of shock as I was, a state of pain, the first thought to come into my mind was for my own safety.” Fearing that he would be arrested, Bergne gave up the idea of taking Anderson’s body to the medical center, he said.

After topping off the steaming radiator, he grabbed Anderson’s wrists and pulled her body out of the car. He covered the body with boxes “to keep the insects off” and drove away.

Bergne was arrested more than a month later, after an extensive manhunt by county investigators and detectives. Attorneys expect the case to go to the jury on Thursday.