Man Found Guilty of Strangling Mentally Ill Woman

A former aerospace draftsman was convicted Monday of killing a mentally ill woman, whom he had admitted strangling on their fifth date last summer.

A Ventura County Superior Court jury found Peter Michael Bergne, 46, guilty of second-degree murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder and of attempted rape in the death of Linda Anderson, 47, of Canoga Park.

Bergne admitted at his trial last week that he killed Anderson and dumped her body off Kerner Road in Simi Valley, where it was found the next morning. He could be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. His sentencing is scheduled May 24.

Wearing the same gray Oxford shirt that he had worn since his trial began a week ago, Bergne stared silently as a court clerk announced the second-degree murder verdict. When the clerk pronounced Bergne not guilty of attempted rape, he shook his head slightly and shuddered.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn said he was pleased with the second-degree murder verdict. He said he had not expected the jury to convict Bergne of first-degree murder because “the evidence was awfully thin on attempted rape.”

In Bergne’s case, under the felony murder rule, the jury would have had to find that he killed Anderson while committing another felony, such as rape, before a first-degree murder verdict could have been handed down.

Bergne has been diagnosed as a paranoid-schizophrenic. He spent six years in a psychiatric hospital in Upstate New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, he was found competent to stand trial at a hearing earlier this year.

Anderson, who also was mentally ill, was living at BRIDGES Inc., a Canoga Park psychiatric care home, where Bergne picked her up to go out for meals and coffee.

Bergne testified last week that Anderson began punching his head when he tried to kiss her in his car at Nordhoff Street and Tampa Avenue in the San Fernando Valley on Aug. 3, 1989, so he grabbed her neck to “keep her at bay.”

About a minute later, Anderson went limp, he testified. When he realized she was dead, Bergne testified, he drove to the Kerner Road exit of the Simi Valley Freeway and dragged her body out of the car.

Bergne testified that he considered having sex with her after she was dead but “didn’t have the heart.”

He said he covered the body with boxes and drove away.

Bergne was arrested more than a month later, after an extensive manhunt by Ventura County authorities. The jury of eight women and four men deliberated about three hours on Thursday, eight hours on Friday and two hours on Monday before emerging with a verdict about noon.