Developer Uses Dummy to Demonstrate Slaying : Courts: Defendant Jim Hood of Newport shows jury how he fired shots into ex-employee.

Crouched above a life-size dummy, clutching a Glock 19 pistol six inches from the mannequin’s head, Newport Beach developer Jim Hood demonstrated for a jury Monday how he pumped several more shots into the already mortally wounded man he is accused of murdering.

Hood, 49, is charged with killing Bruce E. Beauchamp, a disgruntled ex-employee, in March of 1992. A year before, Beauchamp was acquitted of murdering Hood’s wife, Bonnie, while she was in bed with a caretaker at the Sierra Nevada lodge the Hoods owned.

If convicted in San Bernardino Superior Court, Hood faces a sentence of 30 years to life.

Prosecutors charge that Hood hired Beauchamp to kill his 46-year-old wife so he could collect on a $500,000 life insurance policy.

Hood, called to the witness stand by his attorney, maintained steadfastly throughout his testimony that he fatally shot Beauchamp in self-defense, then in the heat of the moment, shot him again and again.

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. David Whitney told jurors at the trial’s outset that Hood had lured the unarmed Beauchamp to his shopping center office in Bloomington, near Fontana, to murder him. He attempted to make the killing look like self-defense by planting a pistol in the dead Beauchamp’s right hand, Whitney said, despite the fact that he was left-handed.

But in dramatic testimony, coming at the end of a daylong direct examination, Hood described an office confrontation that more resembled an Old West shootout.

Free on $2-million bond, Hood said he fired at the 33-year-old Beauchamp “because I was scared to death. I thought he was going to kill me.”

When Beauchamp, who had a violent criminal record, entered his office unannounced on March 2, 1992, Hood testified, it appeared that the construction worker’s eyes were “coming out of his head. . . . He was fierce. He looked like he was going to take me apart piece by piece.”

Hood, in what has become his casual uniform for the trial--striped sport shirt worn open at the collar, Navy blazer, charcoal slacks and loafers--demonstrated how Beauchamp reached behind his back, into his waistband, and pulled out a .357-magnum revolver.

“When I saw the gun I brought my gun up and I shot him,” Hood said. “His gun was pointing at my chest. . . . I think, ‘He’s going to kill me,’ so I fire” one shot each into his head and chest.

At the time, his state of mind was “absolute fear,” Hood told his attorney, Philip C. Bourdette, “I was petrified.”

Hood said: “I don’t know what the (thought) process was--I just pulled the trigger.”

After Beauchamp dropped to the floor, without firing a shot, Hood said he stood over the body and fired again, several times, “because he was still moving. He moved again. . . . I was thinking if he moved again I was going to shoot him again.”

Perceiving further movement in Beauchamp’s gun hand, Hood said he thought, “If you bring that arm up again, I’m going to shoot you again.”

Before the dummy was used to demonstrate the shooting, Hood himself left the witness stand and lay on the courtroom floor, demonstrating for standing jurors the position of Beauchamp’s body.

As Hood did this, his mother, sitting nearby in the first row of spectator seats, averted her eyes. Also in the section were reporters and photographers from six newspapers and two television stations, co-authors of a book in progress and a screenwriter for an ABC television movie.

In all, Beauchamp was hit seven times; the gun found in his hand was never fired. Hood testified that he had armed himself with two handguns after he and his partner were threatened repeatedly by Beauchamp. Hood testified that Beauchamp was angry because his brother-in-law had been arrested for a burglary of $15,000 worth of equipment from Hood’s shopping center.

Before describing the shooting, Hood also detailed other aspects of his relationship with Beauchamp in answering questions from his attorney.

Hood acknowledged paying Beauchamp to cut down 35 historic eucalyptus trees along Interstate 10, at night, after Caltrans refused Hood and his partner permission to cut the trees, which blocked an electronic sign for their shopping center. Although he denied any responsibility for the incident at the time, Hood explained the arrangement on the witness stand by saying: “We didn’t want anyone to know we had cut down the trees.”

In another arrangement, Hood testified that he agreed to a scheme in which Beauchamp was fired and collected unemployment compensation while receiving back pay of $500 a month from Hood. But Hood denied paying or promising Beauchamp any money for murdering Bonnie Hood, as Beauchamp’s widow testified earlier in the trial.

Bonnie Hood was shot at 3 a.m. on Aug. 19, 1990, while in bed with Rudy Manuel, caretaker of the Camp Nelson resort. Manuel was wounded in the head but survived. Cash and expensive jewelry in the room were untouched. But despite Manuel’s eyewitness testimony, Beauchamp was acquitted in Tulare County Superior Court of Bonnie Nelson’s murder. Jim Hood was never charged, and, despite Hood’s misgivings, Beauchamp continued to do work for Hood’s company, Hood testified.

No mention was made Monday of prosecution claims that the Hoods’ marriage was a troubled one, that Bonnie Hood had told friends that she was contemplating divorce or that they quarreled when she wanted to use a $250,000 inheritance to help offset losses at the lodge.

Hood acknowledged that he invested nearly $1 million in Camp Nelson, which is now for sale for $2.5 million, and that it was used primarily as a tax write-off.

Hood said he bought the lodge in 1988, where Bonnie vacationed as a child, as “a promise to my wife, who for years wanted to have a place for her horses. I thought the timing was proper, and I thought it would be fun for all of us.”

Hood is expected to be cross-examined today.