Miralle Threw Out Wife’s Credit Card : Murder trial: The victim’s body hadn’t been identified yet as Tessie Miralle when detectives discovered that her husband had thrown out the item.

Witnesses in the murder trial of a La Canada Flintridge man testified that he was disposing of his wife’s belongings even before the burned body found in the desert last year was identified.

On Tuesday, San Bernardino County detectives testified that 17 days after Tessie Miralle disappeared on Sept. 12, 1990, they recovered one of her credit cards and a sympathy card sent by neighbors from the trash in Donald Miralle’s civil engineering office in Pasadena.

Tessie Miralle’s strangled and burned body, found Sept. 13, had not yet been positively identified when detectives on Sept. 29, 1990, discovered that the items had been discarded.

Defense attorneys A. Brent Carruth, Barry Post and Nancy Ferrazza have asserted Miralle’s innocence. The defense strategy has been to cast doubt on ties built by Deputy Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Elwood linking Miralle to circumstantial evidence.

The defense also has stressed Miralle’s cooperation with investigators. “Isn’t it true that without Mr. Miralle’s help, you wouldn’t have had a suspect in this case?” Post asked Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Madril last week.

“It’s possible,” Madril replied.

After two interviews with Miralle, 47, and before the body of Tessie Miralle, 49, was positively identified Oct. 2, 1990, Madril said, the thought “had entered my mind” that Miralle killed his wife.

Miralle, according to witnesses, showed few signs of concern for his missing wife, preferring to let authorities handle the search. His lawyers have alluded in court that he believed his wife had left as she had after other disputes.

Carruth also said other people with whom Tessie Miralle had business dealings, including a possible loan-sharking operation, may have had motives to kill her.

Elwood dismissed that outright. “There is nothing that we have found in our investigation that would suggest she was involved in anything illegal,” she said.

A Miralle family friend, Ross Endriga, 50, of Montebello, testified that he called Miralle when he first learned Tessie Miralle was missing. Endriga said Miralle “didn’t seem like he cared at that time.”

Outside court, Endriga said that after hearing from Miralle of his second interview with homicide detectives, Endriga told him, “You’re the prime suspect, you’d better get a lawyer.”

Endriga had testified that at the funeral, Miralle “asked me whether I had equity in my house, he was in trouble and had to pay his lawyers,”

“I was surprised” that Miralle was approaching friends at the funeral, Endriga said. Detectives arrested Miralle that afternoon at his La Canada Flintridge home.

Tuesday, Post predicted that the trial will end in early November, a month earlier than original estimates. He also said the defense case will take five days. Carruth, the senior defense lawyer, declined to say whether Miralle will testify.

Also Tuesday, witnesses testified that Miralle bought a fuse like that used to ignite his wife’s body, and shoes that bore a print like those found near the crime scene. Detectives said they found neither the fuse nor the shoes during two searches of Miralle’s home and office after his wife’s disappearance.

Jim Jacobs, 21, who worked at a La Canada Flintridge sporting goods store, testified that computer codes on a June, 1990, cash register receipt found in Miralle’s possession were for men’s basketball shoes with treads like the tread marks found near Tessie Miralle’s body.

Jeff Jaffe, 36, head of Shomer-Tec, a military surplus mail-order firm in Bellingham, Wash., said company records show that in July, 1988, Miralle bought 100 feet of fuse along with 17 other items, including military manuals on booby traps and unconventional warfare, fishhooks and key chains. The fuse, a common item, is used in model rocketry and fireworks, he said.

Responding to defense questioning, Jaffe said he had no records of Miralle’s making purchases in the two years between July, 1988, and Tessie Miralle’s death.

Madril told the court that he learned last year from Miralle’s daughter, Anita, 20, that her father had used cannon fuse on homemade fireworks.

A state deputy fire marshal reconstructed how he believes someone stuffed Tessie Miralle’s body into a 33-gallon plastic trash can, doused it with white gas and ignited it with several feet of fuse.