Youth Pleads Not Guilty to Murder : Courts: Anaheim Hills teen-ager who fatally shot a friend 4 years ago is accused of killing a classmate this year while playing Russian roulette.

Richard H. Bourassa Jr., the 17-year-old accused of killing a classmate four years after fatally shooting another friend, pleaded not guilty to a murder charge Tuesday at his arraignment.

Bourassa, a former Canyon High School student from Anaheim Hills, said little during a brief appearance in North Orange County Municipal Court. Municipal Judge Linda Lancet Miller cut Bourassa’s bail in half, to $100,000, and set his preliminary hearing for Nov. 6.

The stocky youth was then returned to the Orange County Jail’s juvenile section.

Prosecutors allege that Bourassa killed Christian Wiedepuhl on May 24 while playing a form of Russian roulette in the study of his family’s home. In the same room, during the same hour of the day, Bourassa fatally shot 13-year-old Jeffrey A. Bush on Sept. 13, 1986, a death police termed an accident.

Concluding a two-day hearing that ended Monday, Juvenile Court Judge C. Robert Jameson ordered Bourassa to stand trial as an adult, commenting: “I’m extremely offended at this offense and find it to be quite serious.”

Jameson set Bourassa’s bail at $200,000, but on Tuesday Miller reduced it to $100,000.

Bourassa’s attorney, Edward W. Hall of Santa Ana, said the bail reduction is effectively moot because his client’s parents, who have attended each court hearing, will not be able to raise it.

A lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, which prosecutors had filed against Bourassa in Orange County Juvenile Court, was dropped Tuesday.

In arguing to have Bourassa tried as a juvenile, Hall told the judge Monday that the filing of the lesser charge indicated prosecutors were not confident they could convince a jury Bourassa intended to kill Wiedepuhl.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathi Harper said Tuesday that she dropped the lesser charge, among other reasons, to remove the possibility that Bourassa could plead guilty to it.

Harper has depicted Bourassa in court as having a fixation with guns. She has alleged that, during a “reverse Russian roulette” game, Bourassa got his stepfather’s loaded five-chamber, .38-caliber handgun, removed one of the bullets and pointed the weapon at Wiedepuhl to scare him.

Because he is dyslexic, however, Bourassa may have misjudged the chamber’s rotation and fired a live round when he thought he would hit the empty chamber, Harper explained outside court.