2 Slaying Victims May Have Fought With Attackers

A deputy medical examiner testified Thursday that two of the three victims of a triple shotgun slaying in March had bruises on their faces and hands, indicating that they may have been involved in a fistfight shortly before their deaths.

Heather Goodwin, 18, and Danae Palermo, 17, who were shot in the head at close range in a well-to-do Pasadena neighborhood March 21, displayed “traumas to the face and hands, strongly suggestive of an altercation,” Dr. James K. Ribe said at a preliminary hearing in Pasadena Municipal Court.

Judge Elvira R. Mitchell bound over the suspects, Burton Vincin Hebrock and David Adkins, both 17, to Superior Court after determining that there was probable cause to believe that they committed the murders.

The suspects will be arraigned Sept. 6. Both are charged with the murders of Palermo, Goodwin and Kathy McCaulay, 18, all found dead of shotgun blasts March 22 in the Annandale section of Pasadena, after a drinking party in the pool house of the home of McCaulay’s stepfather and mother.

Adkins and the three victims were students or former students at South Pasadena High School.

A sixth person at the party, Cayle Fielder, 16, testified in June that the shootings occurred after a fight between Hebrock and Goodwin. Fielder has not been charged.

Pasadena Detective Michael Korpal said at the hearing that the murder weapon had been discharged for fun by other members of the party, including one or more of the victims, within a few days before the murders. The shotgun belonged to McCaulay’s parents.

Korpal said Hebrock and Adkins had confessed to shooting the girls while being questioned in Salem, Ore., where they had fled in a stolen Mercedes-Benz.

Police said Hebrock confessed that McCaulay died when the gun went off as Adkins was passing it to him. They said Adkins confessed to shooting Palermo and Goodwin. Defense attorneys are challenging both confessions.