Family of Marine Slain in ’88 Will Urge Reopening of Case

The mother of a Marine Corps sergeant killed in a 1988 brawl with two Cal State Fullerton football players said Thursday that the family will ask Orange County authorities to reopen the case, hinting that new information would support their demand for a trial of the athletes.

“We’re going to be submitting another petition to the district attorney’s office to reopen the case,” Jule E. Bottjer said of the death of her son, El Toro Marine Staff Sgt. Richard William Bottjer.

“We do have . . . a concerned citizen who is working with us, and we have some new information I’m not at liberty to disclose at this time,” she said from the family’s home on Long Island, N.Y.

The 30-year-old Marine was beaten to death on April 7, 1988, in a parking lot near a Fullerton nightclub during a fistfight with then-CSUF quarterback Carlos Siragusa and wide receiver John Gibbs.

More than a year later, on April 20, 1989, the district attorney’s office announced it would not file charges against the players, calling Bottjer’s death “an excusable homicide” brought on by the victim’s drunken belligerence.

The players’ suspension from the team was lifted. But the family of the dead Marine, whose heart was used in Orange County’s first heart transplant, vowed to pursue the case “until justice was done.”

Jule Bottjer said Thursday that the Marine Corps compiled a 500-page report, disagreeing with the decision by the district attorney’s office. She said the military asked that the case be reopened, as she and her husband have done, but that after review, prosecutors were satisfied with the original decision against prosecution.

“We have a body picture of him, and he doesn’t have a mark on his hands,” the 55-year-old housewife said. “That seems a little strange if he was the one who was instigating the fight and fighting as they said.”

Bottjer and his friend, Cpl. Thomas Duran, had scuffled with the athletes inside Baxter’s, a popular nightspot on State College Boulevard. Bouncers kicked them out of the bar, so they took the dispute to a nearby parking lot. Witnesses told Fullerton police that it was Bottjer who was insistent on fighting.

According to police, Bottjer squared off against both Gibbs and Siragusa and threw the first punch, hitting Gibbs in the jaw. Both athletes swung almost simultaneously at the Marine, and a coroner’s autopsy determined that it was the first blow--behind Bottjer’s left ear--that proved fatal.

Jule Bottjer, who has become involved with the organization Parents of Murdered Children, is unconvinced that her son was the aggressor.