Four Go on Trial in Series of ‘Mall Murders,’ Kidnapings : Courts: A prosecutor characterizes the suspects as callous conspirators and a family of killers. Two defense attorneys say the case is based on faulty evidence.

Four people accused of a series of kidnapings, robberies and killings dubbed “the mall murders” were characterized Monday as cold, callous conspirators by a prosecutor as their murder trial got under way in Pomona Superior Court. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death.

Defendants Vincent Hubbard, John Lewis, Robbin Machuca and Eileen Huber terrorized their victims in the summer of 1991, ate lunch minutes before killing one woman and laughed openly after slaying a man, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Urgo said. Machuca and Huber proudly wore jewelry taken off the bodies of two women, Urgo said. Meanwhile, Lewis, the group’s alleged ringleader, gloried in televised coverage of the crimes, the prosecutor said.

“What I want you to do every day you come in here is take a good look at these people,” Urgo told jurors in his opening statement. “They never cared about the lives they were destroying.

“What you have here is a crime family--a family that made its living by committing robberies and killing people to avoid getting caught.”

The defendants, accused of murdering five people and kidnaping three others, sat calmly with their attorneys. In contrast to earlier court appearances when they sat in court in blue jail jumpsuits, all four defendants were well dressed. Machuca wore a black business suit and Huber wore a conservative white dress with blue stripes.

In detailed charts, Urgo linked the four defendants to the crimes by confessions, fingerprints and evidence found by police in their West Covina apartment.

Attorneys representing two of the defendants countered that police and prosecutors have woven together a weak case based on faulty witness identifications, confessions coaxed out of some defendants by skillful police work and tenuous links to unrelated crimes.

“I believe my client did not kill anyone,” Lewis’ attorney, Lee Coleman, told jurors. “My client’s a fall guy, a patsy. Because of his youthfulness and inexperience, blame has been put on him.”

Coleman disputed Urgo’s argument that the San Gabriel Valley crimes were linked by similar kidnaping methods, similar locations where bodies were dumped and similar routes and locales for the crimes. Instead, the lawyer suggested that there were six crimes with different patterns, resulting in the kidnaping of two women from the Puente Hills Mall, the kidnaping of victims at automatic bank teller machines in West Covina and robberies in Chino and Monrovia.

Hubbard’s attorney, Gerald Gornik, said his client became linked to the group only because he was romantically involved with Machuca, Lewis’ sister. Hubbard was never correctly identified as a suspect nor was he linked by fingerprints to any crimes, the attorney said.

“The prosecution is contending that they were like a family, like the Manson family, that no one could do a crime with Mr. Lewis but Mr. Hubbard,” Gornik said. “That’s ridiculous.”

He said that there is evidence that Lewis contacted others, rather than his client, to commit crimes with him.

Coleman and Gornik argued that the real killers are at large.

The crimes, which took place between July 5 to Aug. 27, 1991, received widespread media attention and sparked fear in the San Gabriel Valley because two women victims were kidnaped at gunpoint from Puente Hills Mall in daylight, forced to withdraw money from automatic teller machines, then shot to death. Their bodies were dumped alongside freeways.

Other victims were kidnaped outside banks where they had stopped to use automated teller machines.

The four defendants face 27 felony charges stemming from eight incidents. The charges include conspiracy, kidnaping, robbery, murder and receiving stolen property.

The trial is expected to last 2 1/2 months and involve hundreds of witnesses, including the three kidnaping victims who escaped.

Machuca’s attorney, John Tyre, is expected to give his opening statement today. Huber’s attorney, David Daugherty, said he will not make opening remarks.