Botched Ojai Robbery’s Colorful Victims Grab Murder Trial Spotlight

The murder trial under way in Courtroom 34 of the Ventura County Hall of Justice would be interesting enough just for the legal question it raises:

Are the two defendants, who are accused of trying to rob a New Year’s party in Ojai, guilty of murder because a guest killed one of their cohorts?

But just as intriguing as any legal issue is the parade of tattooed, bearded, leather-clad witnesses, many of whom would look more at home behind the handlebars of a Harley than in front of a jury.

And strange as they may look, the story they tell is even stranger. It’s a story of bikers who stayed for last call at a neighborhood bar and then partied all night with booze, acid and speed. It’s a story of tough guys and their women who have seen a fight or two but were caught off guard by the treachery--and ineptitude--of friends whose alleged robbery scheme ended in homicide.

There was the witness named Shine, for example--short for John Phillip Shine Jr.--who testified he was in the bathroom, about to snort speed with two other guests, when the robbers burst into the house last New Year’s morning.

There was August Howard, the red-bearded heavy-equipment operator who said he thought it was a joke when the ski-masked intruders ordered everyone to lie on the floor. He had been wrong about that, judging by the patch covering the spot where his right eye was shot out, and the sling supporting his severely injured right arm.

And for nearly five hours of testimony over two days, there was Billie Joe Gregory, a long-haired, full-bearded biker whose tattooed right arm reads “Love One Another.” Gregory admitted that he doesn’t like cops, does like to rumble and did fire from the waist with a 30.06 rifle, killing intruder Ron Brown, 22, and wounding suspect Frank Stoddard, 28.

Then he lit up a joint, Gregory said, to calm everybody down before the police arrived.

Stoddard and his co-defendant Timothy Antonelli, 24, are accused of armed robbery and murder. Antonelli knew the residents of the house and allegedly set up the robbery and helped the intruders gain entrance. The gunfire erupted during a scuffle as Gregory and Shine tried to overcome the intruders.

Gregory’s colorful commentary (“How often do you get to kill somebody and not be charged with it?”) and his free-wheeling repartee with defense lawyers drew a steady stream of spectators to the courtroom last week.

Defense attorneys slipped in to see how Stoddard’s attorney, Steven D. Powell, was doing with his strategy, which in effect has been to attack Gregory, who was not charged in the killing, as a “drug-crazed maniac” who overreacted after getting hold of an intruder’s gun.

Prosecutors stopped by between cases, eager to see how Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn was faring in a case where most of the eyewitnesses admittedly were on drugs.

Glynn acknowledged that several of his witnesses “have somewhat colored pasts.”

Although that is not unusual in a murder case, he said, “the fact that you don’t have upstanding members of the community as victims has a tendency to diminish what we prosecutors call the moral imperative to convict.”

Powell and Antonelli’s attorney, Charles L. Cassy, declined to comment on the case.

In questioning prospective jurors, Glynn said a key question was whether they could accept the theory that someone could be guilty of murder if they provoked a lethal response by someone else. In this case, he said, “the actual killer was not one of the perpetrators but one of the victims.”

Glynn also asked jurors whether they felt that drug abusers were entitled to the same protection of the law as other citizens.

Shine admitted doing methamphetamine, both in the bathroom when the robbery started and earlier at the Deer Lodge, a biker bar outside Ojai. He also said he called Antonelli’s roommate in Ventura about 3:30 a.m. and asked her to bring up some marijuana--a call that allegedly gave Antonelli the idea of robbing the party.

Howard admitted to doing methamphetamine about 6 p.m. New Year’s Eve, then to drinking beer until the Deer Lodge closed and he switched to Jack Daniels at the party. He had drunk about half a fifth by the time the robbers arrived about 6 a.m., he said.

Gregory topped everyone with his admission that he has used LSD several times a week for more than 20 years. He said he took four hits of acid the night of the robbery but complained that it was poor quality compared to what he used to consume 10 or 15 years ago.

“To get high like I like to get--a real good high--I’d need 15 to 20 hits,” he told Powell, who is Stoddard’s attorney.

Asked if he had had hallucinations, Gregory said that LSD these days doesn’t make the users see colors like older forms of the drug.

“No more purple haze?” Powell asked.

“No,” Gregory replied. “Bummer, too.”

Gregory responded just as glibly to Powell’s attempts to paint him as a drug-and-alcohol-fueled brawler who fired the shots needlessly and then tailored his story to keep from being charged.

He conceded that he liked to fight and acknowledged that speed enhanced his violent tendencies that night. “It’s a good thing, too,” he said, provoking laughter from jurors.

Gregory also had the jury laughing when he said he had eight or nine White Russian cocktails at the Deer Lodge but didn’t touch the whiskey at the party. “They don’t let me drink it,” he said. “I get pretty wild.”

Despite their unconventional appearance, Glynn said he is satisfied with the witnesses’ testimony so far. As much as anything, he said, he worries that their testimony may have provoked too much laughter.

“A laughing jury is not a convicting jury,” he said.

The testimony that may prove most embarrassing for the prosecution came not from the bearded bikers but from Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Nancy Stovall, who arrested Antonelli 10 days after the robbery.

Glynn asked if the man she arrested was in the courtroom. Stovall said yes. But instead of pointing to Antonelli, she aimed her finger at Stoddard.

Glynn, who declined to comment on the misidentification, said he would correct it with other witnesses when the trial resumes May 13, after Judge Charles R. McGrath returns from vacation.