One Marine Blames the Other as Double-Slaying Trial Opens

Two years ago, Eric Wick and Thomas Merrill were best friends at the El Toro Marine base. They lived in the same barracks, worked at the armory, practiced at the shooting range, and spent their off-hours together.

Prosecutors say the two young, baby-faced Marines also walked into the Newport Coin Exchange, a rare coin dealership in Newport Beach, on March 14, 1989, killed two people during a robbery and shot a third person four times, leaving him without an eye and with permanent brain damage.

“They were inseparable,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson told jurors in an opening statement Monday at their trial for the double slaying. “They planned this robbery together and they agreed to execute any witnesses.”

The friendship of the two ex-Marines has fallen apart since their arrest. In statements by their lawyers to the jury Monday, each blames the other for the crime.

“The evidence is going to show that Tom Merrill was not involved in this,” said his attorney, Gary M. Pohlson. “But Eric Wick was there.”

Merrill, 24 at the time, admitted to law enforcement authorities only that he had stored a 9-millimeter handgun afterward but said Wick gave it to him and he did not know it had been used in a crime.

Wick’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Tim B. Severin, acknowledged that his client was inside the Coin Exchange when the shots were fired but said that Merrill was the shooter and that Wick, then 18, did not even know that a robbery was going to occur.

“Eric was dominated by an older, stronger, craftier Tom Merrill,” Severin argued.

Killed in the robbery were Clyde Oatts, 45, and Rene King, 38, the wife of the owner, William D. King, now 39, who was left for dead by the gunmen. Oatts and William King had returned from a late-afternoon lunch and round of drinks just before the shooting occurred.

Two witnesses from the sidewalk heard shots inside and said they saw Wick inside the store with a shotgun in hand. They ran to a nearby Coco’s restaurant to call the police. But moments later one of them saw a second man break through the glass of the front door, which could only be opened by a buzz from the proprietor, to escape. The witness has since picked Merrill out of both a photo lineup and an in-person lineup but has admitted his identifications are not 100% certain.

Prosecutors contend that Merrill was the actual shooter but that Wick is equally involved.

Wick’s lawyer, Severin, says all his client did was hold the shotgun, which belonged to William King. When King tried to thwart the robbery, his shotgun was taken from him.

Wick, the son of an FBI agent, went AWOL from the base a few weeks after the shooting. A receipt found at the scene had the name “Eric” and a telephone number for Wick’s barracks.

Prosecutor Robinson claims that Wick had gone to the shop earlier to order $25,000 worth of rare coins, to make sure that the Kings had something valuable on hand when they returned to rob the couple.

Although the killers at the coin dealership inadvertently left a witness alive, William King’s testimony will be of limited help to prosecutors. He has suffered brain damage that affected his memory of events that day, Robinson told jurors.

But Robinson said King did tell police that night, when he thought he was dying: “Tom shot me.” He never identified the shooter by any other name, however.