Jurors in Murder Trial Meet at Cliff

A makeshift court convened Thursday on a majestic Big Sur cliff to hear testimony about whether it was murder, not an accident, when a woman plunged to her death in 1987.

Jurors craned their necks to peer down the sheer cliffs where the body of Deana Hubbard Wild, 20, was recovered after a 390-foot fall.

The fall was reported by Virginia Rearden, 55, and Rearden’s ex-husband, Billie Joe McGinnis, 52. Police later learned that the San Diego couple had bought a $35,000 life insurance policy on Wild the day before her death.

Prosecutors accuse Rearden, who is on trial, and McGinnis of luring Wild to the vaulting granite cliffs so they could profit from shoving her off. The defense claims that Wild fell accidentally.

Jurors heard testimony about more than a dozen pictures taken by Rearden of Wild, moments before the fall. The pictures show Wild and McGinnis, who died last year, at the edge of the cliffs.

Rearden’s trial began Jan. 6 in San Diego County, where the alleged murder plot began. Jurors were flown Thursday to San Jose and then took a bus 100 miles south to Sea Lion Point to hear testimony and examine the scene along a stretch where dozens of people have died.