Killer Impassive at Hearing on His Release : Justice: Supporters of slain Escondido doctor pack courtroom but can’t demonstrate their opposition to moving Steve Larsen to a halfway house.

Steve Larsen sat in a San Diego courtroom Friday, pale and motionless as a wax image, as psychiatrists and other medical experts testified about him as if he were not there. The court hearing is to determine whether Larsen is now legally sane.

The 35-year-old former Eagle Scout pleaded guilty four years ago to the shooting death of Dr. Craig Blundell, a popular Escondido internist, after Blundell told Larsen that tests showed the stomach pains that Larsen said he was suffering were all in his mind.

Larsen pleaded guilty to first-degree murder but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to Patton State Hospital for an indeterminate term.

At Friday’s hearing to determine if Larsen should be released from the state mental hospital and placed in a San Diego halfway house, the courtroom was packed with Escondido residents supporting the victim’s widow, Kay Blundell, in her effort to prevent the release of her husband’s killer after four years.

Psychiatrist Charles J. Rabiner testified Friday that Larsen was “free from acute psychotic symptoms” and delusions that had caused him to walk into Dr. Blundell’s office July 28, 1986, pull out a handgun and shoot the physician to death. He apparently believed that Blundell was part of a conspiracy to prevent him from obtaining disability benefits.

Rabiner said Larsen “was alert,” and “came readily to the interview,” which took place last Jan. 10. Rabiner did say, however, that Larsen’s reactions were “blunted,” which the psychiatrist attributed to the tranquilizers that Larsen must take.

“In my opinion, he does not present a danger to himself and others,” Rabiner said in response to questioning from Larsen’s attorney, Michael McGlinn.

If Superior Court Judge William Mudd agrees with Rabiner, Larsen will be released from Patton to a halfway house in San Diego.

Under questioning from Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Madruga, Rabiner said “there was a time when television was directing his (Larsen’s) activities,” and conceded that Larsen could have learned “to present himself in the best possible light to examining physicians” during his stay at the state mental hospital.

But the psychiatrist stressed that he did not feel Larsen was a danger to anyone because of the heavy injections of tranquilizers he receives.

Dr. J. Reid Meloy, a clinical psychologist and head of the county’s conditional release program, described the program into which Larsen would be placed if the court permits his release.

Meloy said that, of the 64 mental patients in the San Diego program since its start in 1986, only two have been sent back to Patton. None “acted out in a violent way,” Meloy said.

He called the San Diego conditional release system “a very successful program,” which allows supervision of mentally ill patients at one-quarter of the cost of Patton State Hospital treatment, which averages $60,000 a year.

Larsen would not be a threat to Escondido relatives of Dr. Blundell or to anyone else, Meloy said, because of the monitored medication injections he will receive while on the program.

“Paranoid schizophrenia does not reappear overnight. It doesn’t happen on a full moon,” the psychologist explained. “Larsen would be under close supervision (in the San Diego conditional release program) and any deterioration in his condition would be noted long before he could relapse into delusional behavior,” Meloy said.

During the sanity hearing to decide Larsen’s fate, about 50 Escondido residents filled the courtroom audience section. None wore signs to show their support for the dead doctor and his widow.

Judge Mudd had ordered spectators not to wear signs or to demonstrate their allegiance in any way while in his courtroom. Earlier this week, he ruled that none of the hundreds of letters of support or thousands of signatures on petitions asking that Larsen be kept in Patton State Hospital would be considered as evidence in the hearing. Only letters from members of Dr. Blundell’s immediate family will be considered, Mudd said.