Defendants Blame Each Other in Brutal Triple Slaying

The triple murder trial of Christopher Box and Manuel Flores began Wednesday with opening statements by three attorneys who all agreed that the two defendants played a role in the brutal killings of a mother, her son, and a roommate in Clairemont last year.

The biggest surprises during Wednesday’s proceedings were statements by Manuel Flores’ attorney that directly implicated his client in the death of two of the victims.

Robert Boyce told the jury that Flores--who he said was under the spell of his idol, Christopher Box--slit the throat of 29-year-old Kevin Morton Chandler and plunged a knife into the chest of 20-year-old April Louise Gilhousen.

Boyce said that Flores, 18, accompanied Box, 21, to the Clairemont Mesa Boulevard house where the victims lived so that Box could check on a deal to purchase one pound of marijuana. While waiting for Gilhousen to awaken on the morning of Aug. 9, 1989, “Christopher Box, unprovoked, picks up a baseball bat, raises it above his head and brings it down on the skull of Kevin Chandler,” Boyce said.

After that incident, Flores fell under the control of Box, the older and more successful athlete, Boyce said.

Flores then followed Box’s orders to “cut his throat,” and then to “cut it harder.”

The attack was interrupted by a knock at the door. Box struck the visitor with a baseball bat and chased him down the street, Boyce said, then returned and instructed Flores to continue the pursuit. When Flores returned to the scene, Gilhousen had been bludgeoned, Boyce said.

Again following orders from Box, “Flores takes the knife and shoves it into the body of April Gilhousen,” Boyce said.

Gilhousen’s 3-year-old son Bryan was found beaten and strangled.

In his conclusion, Boyce told jurors, “You will see the hand of Chris Box in the planning, execution and attempt to cover up these murders.”

Box’s attorney, Charles Adair, took a different tack in his statement to the jury. While admitting his client was at the scene of the killings, Adair told the jury that the “physical evidence is going to be very confusing to you.”

Without directly stating that his client had a hand in the murders, Adair said his client had no intention of killing, as can be seen by the fact that the primary murder weapons were from the house. He also suggested that a struggle may have led to the killings by stating that Chandler was a “speed freak” addicted to methamphetamine, and that a replica of a gun was found next to Gilhousen’s body.

“‘It was so realistic-looking that the police officers thought it was a real gun,” he said.

Adair told jurors they can expect to hear character witnesses testify to Box’s gentle character.

After Boyce’s opening statement, Adair said Flores “concocted after his arrest” the story implicating his client, and he said he also plans to call witnesses who will testify that Flores was “violent, unpredictable, and how he bragged about violence in the past.”

In her opening statement, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lori Rooney carefully outlined the events on the day the three were killed and the bodies of Chandler and Gilhousen’s son were dumped in Clairemont.

She said a witness will testify how Box and Flores stated three days before the crime that they “were going to rip off the lady across the street.” Box was a resident of National City, but Flores lived in the same neighborhood as Gilhousen and her son.

Rooney said Gilhousen’s live-in boyfriend, Michael Ross, will testify how a pound of marijuana and more than $2,000 were missing from the house after the murders.

She said the prosecution intends to show how Box and Flores “conspired days ahead to kill the three individuals in the home.”

Box faces the death penalty because of the multiple victims. Flores cannot face the death penalty because he was a juvenile at the time of the slayings.