Judge Won’t Drop Murder Charge in Prom Night Death

A judge Tuesday refused to dismiss a murder charge against 19-year-old Paul Crowder, despite the fact that a bloody mattress that the defense calls a “crucial piece of evidence” in the prom night slaying has been destroyed by police.

Superior Court Judge Theodore Millard ruled that the destruction of the mattress, on which 17-year-old Berlyn Cosman was sleeping when she was fatally shot in the head, was not done in bad faith, even though the intact mattress might “give some authority to an accidental discharge theory” by the defense.

Crowder’s attorney, E. Bonnie Marshall, had said Monday that Crowder’s .357 magnum pistol discharged in a darkened room of an Anaheim hotel last June 1 when the former La Crescenta High School football player stumbled while entering the room where Cosman slept. The mattress, Marshall maintained, would have shown that the fatal bullet was fired from a much lower angle than the prosecution believes.

“I don’t believe there is any hint of any evidence in the case . . . (of) any bad faith shown . . . at the time when the mattress was not preserved in its intact condition,” Millard said.

“There is also no showing that the exculpatory value of preserving the mattress intact for future trajectory defense testing” was known to Anaheim police, “albeit it may aid or give some authority to an accidental-discharge theory,” Millard said.

The defense may raise the issue of the mattress’s destruction again later in the trial, when the prosecution introduces its evidence of the bullet’s trajectory.

Outside the courtroom, Marshall said that she is concerned about the impact of pretrial publicity on jury selection but that she remains “open-minded” about getting a fair jury. She declined to say whether Crowder would take the stand in his defense.

“Everyone has Fifth Amendment rights,” she said.

The defense and prosecution skirmished over copies of taped interviews of witnesses, some of which were garbled, made by Anaheim police after the prom night shooting.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans agreed to turn over to the defense the original tapes, sections of which, he said, were unintelligible.