Youths’ Statements Describe Slayings That Rocked Posh Neighborhood : Courts: Prosecution plays interviews with two charged in shotgun killings of three teen-agers in Pasadena.

“I shot somebody who didn’t need to be shot--for no reason,” an anguished Vincent Hebrock told a homicide detective in a taped statement two days after the murders of three teen-age girls in Pasadena last year.

“She never did a . . . thing to me,” he said.

After playing two apparent confessions by Hebrock and co-defendant David Adkins, both 18, charged with the shotgun slaying of the three girls, prosecutors wrapped up their case in Pasadena Superior Court on Friday.

The apparently damning nature of the statements did little to dispel the aura of senselessness that surrounds the murders that shocked the well-to-do Annandale neighborhood where teen-agers frequently gathered in the home of one of the victims.

Hebrock is heard to say on one tape that he shot 18-year-old Kathy Macaulay during a drunken gathering on March 21, 1991, by accident. “I have no idea why it happened,” Hebrock said. “I was in a daze.” He said the shotgun had gone off inexplicably as he and Adkins held it, killing Macaulay with a single blast.

Then, Hebrock said, he handed the shotgun to Adkins, who told investigators he was “tripping” on LSD when he shot Heather Goodwin, 18, and Danae Palermo, 17.

“I took Heather,” Adkins says on the tape. Then he pointed the shotgun at Palermo, who was asleep on a bed, he said.

“Where did you shoot her?” Pasadena Detective Mike Korpal asks on the tape. “In the back,” Adkins replies. Under prodding, he concedes: “It could have been in the back of the head.” All three girls were found shot in the head.

Adkins also says on the tape: “Obviously I’m guilty and I’ve admitted this. . . . Could they throw me in jail for life?”

The girls died in Macaulay’s garage apartment, where she had secretly housed both boys for several weeks. “Kathy’s house,” as friends called the apartment, was across a patio from the house where her mother and stepfather lived.

Friends of the victims testified that the apartment was a hangout where they could drink beer--as much as two six-packs a day for each regular, one young woman said--and consume drugs with little parental supervision.

Macaulay’s mother, Linda Koss, a clinical pathologist who had been at a Chicago convention for five days before the murders, testified that she would occasionally go to her daughter’s apartment to see if the teen-agers needed anything.

“I’d pop up to see if they needed any ice,” she said. “There was no ice maker up there.”

Lawyers for the two defendants argued unsuccessfully that the tapes should not have been admitted as evidence because their clients were not adequately warned that they did not have to speak to detectives.

Attorneys Stephen Romero and Rickard Santwier, representing Adkins and Hebrock respectively, said that because of their clients’ ages the detectives should have done more than just read them their rights to have a lawyer and to remain silent.

Hebrock was 17 at the time of his arrest; Adkins was 16.

Romero complained that Adkins was not allowed to speak to a lawyer for more than a week after his arrest. He said Adkins’ statement was elicited by “psychological coercion.”

But Judge J. Michael Byrne, saying there was no indication that the defendants had not understood their rights, ruled that the tapes were admissible.

After the prosecution finished its case, Hebrock’s lawyer rested without calling any witnesses. He is scheduled to give closing arguments Tuesday. Adkins’ lawyer will begin calling witnesses Monday. The case is being tried before two juries.

During cross-examination, Romero and Santwier focused on inconsistencies in the testimony of the third youth at the fatal gathering, Cayle Fiedler, 17. Fiedler said he awakened from a drunken stupor to see Adkins shoot Palermo in the head.

Fiedler--who had been described in police reports and court documents as “Fielder”--said he was in fear for his life after Adkins waved the shotgun in his face and asked: “Are you down with us?”

Fiedler testified that he heard Adkins say, minutes after the murders: “I just killed my girlfriend.” He also heard Hebrock say: “Yeah, dude, we smoked ‘em all.”

But under questioning from Santwier, Fiedler conceded that he was uncertain of the exact wording of those two statements. He also said that he had been drunk, having consumed a large amount of beer and whiskey.

Romero focused on the actions of Fiedler, who fled to his mother’s home in the state of Washington after the murders but returned two days later as the prosecution’s star witness. Romero suggested through questioning that the youth’s flight was evidence of his culpability.