Different Image of Youth Offered in Slaying

A picture captioned “Kill Saturday” and a letter referring to “getting that S.O.B.” were found in a 17-year-old’s duffle bag after he fatally shot a classmate in what he said was an accident, a prosecutor told a judge Thursday.

Richard H. Bourassa Jr. also allegedly told a friend that he wanted to join the military so he could get “paid to kill people,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathi Harper said during a hearing at which she is seeking to have Bourassa tried for murder as an adult.

After Thursday’s hearing, Harper declined to elaborate on the meaning of the picture and letter found in the duffle bag, but Bourassa’s attorney said he believed that neither referred to the victim. The evidence was presented, Harper said, to illustrate that Bourassa is not the “mellow” youth ignorant of guns, as he has told authorities.

Bourassa shot and killed 17-year-old Christian Wiedepuhl May 24--a Thursday--in the study of the family’s Anaheim Hills home. He told police that he was trying to get his stepfather’s .38-caliber pistol from Wiedepuhl when the gun discharged.

In the same room on Sept. 13, 1986, Bourassa shot and killed another classmate, 13-year-old Jeffrey Bush, after he said that a 12-gauge shotgun accidentally discharged. Police ruled it an accidental shooting.

Bourassa, charged with murder and involuntary manslaughter in Wiedepuhl’s death, is being held in Juvenile Hall.

Juvenile Court Judge C. Robert Jameson made no ruling at the hearing, which will continue Monday. A probation officer who investigated the case is expected to testify about her findings on whether Bourassa should stand trial as a juvenile.

Investigators did not believe Bourassa’s version of Wiedepuhl’s killing, but because there were no witnesses, they spent four months collecting physical evidence to recreate the shooting. That included ballistics tests, clothing analysis and examinations of gunpowder residue.

On Thursday, Harper presented numerous police findings besides the duffle bag contents in seeking to have Bourassa, who turns 18 in January, tried as an adult.

In explaining outside the courtroom later the significance of some findings, Harper revealed for the first time Bourassa’s version of the shooting.

She said he has told authorities that Wiedepuhl got a gun belonging to Bourassa’s parents and only after two demands handed it over to Bourassa in the doorway of the study. As Bourassa took the gun, holding it waist high, Wiedepuhl stooped to pick up a holster, Bourassa told police. The gun accidentally went off, mortally wounding Wiedepuhl in the head.

But Harper contended that the gun could not have accidentally discharged because ballistic tests introduced Thursday showed that “no way the gun could have fired without direct pressure” on the trigger.

In previous hearings, Harper has characterized Bourassa as having a fixation with guns, despite his statements of indifference to and ignorance about weapons to police in the hours after Wiedepuhl was shot.

Harper told the judge that Bourassa wrote a recent school paper on guns, and friends interviewed by investigators allegedly quoted Bourassa as saying he wanted to join the Reserve Officers Training Corps so he could “shoot guns.”

The defense said little in court, but Bourassa’s attorney, Edward W. Hall, said afterwards that Bourassa’s “Kill Saturday” message was on a sheet of doodles where he had also written, “hart and soul” and “Richard and Allison forever.” He said they were “like a thousand things found in anyone’s locker.”

Hall suggested that it was teen-age bravado that led Bourassa to sound so gung-ho to schoolmates because he had spent Easter vacation--just weeks before Wiedepuhl was shot--at the Ft. Irwin Military Reservation with relatives.

Hall also said what otherwise might be viewed as patriotism is now being interpreted differently by the prosecution.

“Without the death of Christian,” he added, “nobody would have taken a second look” at Bourassa’s interest in weapons and the military.

Over the weekend, the judge will review police reports read in court Thursday, as well as the probation officer’s findings on whether Bourassa should be tried as an adult. He also will view three videotapes: two of them are of police interviews with Bourassa, including his re-enactment of the shooting; the third features the inside of the home.