Attorney Says Affair, Plan to Sell Firm Led to Slaying

A Tarzana woman shot and killed her millionaire husband in anger because he had been having an affair for 12 years and because she feared his plans to sell his import-export business would decrease the value of his estate, a prosecutor alleged in Van Nuys Superior Court on Monday.

The attorney for defendant Carole Evelyn Mellinger, however, argued in his opening statement that Mellinger was simply very drunk and thought she was shooting a burglar when she fired four shots into her husband, Brainerd, last Jan. 24 in the den of their posh hillside home.

The contrasting views emerged during the opening day of testimony in Mellinger’s trial on charges of first-degree murder. Mellinger, 48, has pleaded not guilty and is free on $400,000 bail.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this case has all the makings of a finely written soap opera but the tragedy is, it all happened,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Korban told jurors who will decide Mellinger’s fate.

The Mellingers had been married for 23 years but Brainerd Mellinger had a mistress with whom he had been having a 12-year affair, Korban said in detailing a motive for the shooting.

Mellinger also was upset with her husband’s plan to sell his company, Korban said. Although the couple had a premarital agreement specifying that Mellinger would get no money if the couple divorced, she was the primary beneficiary of her husband’s will, Korban said.

The company’s stock provided the bulk of the estate and Mellinger feared that the sale of the company would decrease her share, Korban said.

Paul Caruso, one of Mellinger’s two attorneys, did not dispute that his client shot her husband. But he said it was an accident.

Mellinger came to work for her husband when she was 19 years old, and they were “very much in love with each other.” She knew about the mistress and about other affairs her husband had had, Caruso said.

Mellinger had been the victim of a peeping Tom in the past and her husband had said he would be out of town the night of the shooting, Caruso said. He said Brainerd Mellinger had given his wife the handgun with which she shot him, saying “if anybody breaks into the house, shoot to kill.”

Mellinger had a blood-alcohol level of .19% and .18% in two tests taken by police five to six hours after her arrest, the attorney added. Her blood-alcohol content therefore could have been as high as .30%, nearly four times the legal limit, Caruso said.

In other testimony, Los Angeles Police Officer Jerry Fritz testified that Mellinger discussed the city’s gang problems as he drove her to the police station after the shooting, never inquiring about her husband’s condition.