Defendant Denies Role in Slayings : Courts: Former Marine on trial for coin shop killings says robbery talk was just a joke. His friend admits being at the scene.

A former Tustin-based Marine testified Tuesday that although he had joked with friends about committing robberies, he took no part in a Newport Coin Exchange holdup two years ago which erupted in gunfire and left two people dead.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Thomas Merrill, 26, also denied that he and co-defendant Eric Wick, an ex-Marine who admits he was at the robbery scene, had spent all their time together when off the Tustin helicopter station.

“We were close friends, but we weren’t joined at the hip,” Merrill said in Orange County Superior Court.

Merrill acknowledged, however, that he and Wick had made comments once about “an assault on a crack house” and the possibility of killing people inside. But Merrill insisted that if they discussed anything else about robberies, it was only in jest.

Prosecutors claim that Merrill was the gunman in the March 14, 1989, murders of Clyde Oatts, 45, and Rene King, 38, wife of William D. King, the owner of the Newport Coin Exchange on MacArthur Boulevard. King, 39, was wounded in the incident.

The victims were shot with a 9-millimeter pistol. Witnesses have said that Wick, 20, helped rob the coin dealership and was armed with a shotgun. Two others have implicated Merrill in the crime, but have said their identifications are less than 100% accurate.

Wick already has admitted being inside the dealership during the robbery. The murder weapon was found in his car parked at his parents’ home in Reno. His attorneys contend, however, that Wick walked into the dealership without a weapon and had no idea that Merrill was armed and planning to rob it.

The shotgun, Wick’s attorneys claim, belonged to King, who had it taken away from him when he attempted to thwart the holdup.

Merrill, who is now on administrative leave from the Marine Corps, testified Tuesday that he would never have been involved with something like that because he found it “disgusting.”

He told the court that after the shooting he helped move Wick’s guns to a storage locker they shared. Merrill also testified that he had talked to military investigators and surmised that one of the guns might have been used in something illegal.

“I so strongly believed he (Wick) could not have been involved in something like that I put it out of my mind,” Merrill said.

But earlier in the case, a fellow Marine, John Brady, testified that he, Wick and Merrill once discussed committing robberies, including holdups of headquarters for drug dealers.

Under cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson hammered away at Merrill about the conversation.

“I’m bothered by the word conversation, “ Merrill responded. “There were comments, just asides. But I never thought anybody was planning anything.”

When defense attorney Gary Pohlson asked Merrill if he and Wick were still friends, the young man paused and answered, “I don’t know.”