Trial Begins for Son in Slaying of His Parents : Courts: Jeffrey Stephen Percell faces the death penalty if he is convicted. The prosecutor says he is unaware of a motive.

More than four years after Doris and John Percell were found shot to death in their Sierra Madre home, the trial of their son for the murders began in a Van Nuys courtroom last week.

Jeffrey Stephen Percell, 35, faces the death penalty if convicted in the Nov. 15, 1988, slayings of the couple, both 61.

Police found the couple’s bodies in the family home on Liliano Drive, both shot at close range in the head, their feet and hands bound with twine and their bodies wrapped in blankets. A Bible lay across Doris Percell’s legs.

For nearly a month, Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detectives sought the couple’s son, who finally surrendered Dec. 13, 1988, to authorities in Vermont.

But the trial, which began Thursday in Superior Court, does not promise to shed much light on crimes that shocked Sierra Madre, a tiny town of 10,762 residents. The prosecutor said he is unaware of a motive.

“I’m not sure we’ll ever be aware of a motive during the trial,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Elton (Butch) Sims said during a recess. But he added, “We have two willful, deliberate, premeditated murders. The only issue in the case is the identity of the killer. I believe the evidence shows Jeffrey Percell is definitely responsible.”

Defense attorneys, in comments outside court, emphasized the lack of motive and the inability of the coroner’s medical examiner to pin down the exact time of the deaths, crucial because Jeffrey Percell might have been out of town when the couple was murdered.

“He did not kill his parents,” co-defense attorney Michael M. Crain told a reporter. He said the case was “based on nothing more than minimal suspicion and pure conjecture.”

A possible motive developed by investigators early on--that Jeffrey Percell had a cocaine problem and was angered because his parents had notified police--has been rejected by both sides. None of the lawyers in the case said they will bring up the issue.

The passage of time has further hampered the case.

Sims said he plans to call up to 52 witnesses: some now out of state, some retired and others who might have difficulty recalling details. The prosecutor said the defense asked for numerous continuances, delaying the trial’s start. But Rowan Klein, Crain’s co-counsel, said conflicts with other, ongoing cases prevented the defense from going to court sooner.

On Thursday, an impassive Jeffrey Percell--neatly dressed in white shirt, gray sweater and slacks, his reddish-blond beard trimmed--heard opening arguments.

The prosecutor’s case centers on the defendant’s comments to police when they arrived at the home the day before the bodies were discovered. Police had been called after John Percell’s employer became concerned by his absence. In addition, Sims pointed to an accumulation of evidence found in locales around the country.

Sims said Jeffrey Percell told police that his mother had been taken to the hospital by his father, vice president of a Monterey Park meat-packing firm. But a co-worker of John Percell, given the same information, called various local hospitals and could not find the couple, Sims said.

Further, police found Doris Percell’s Mercedes-Benz, missing for a month after the murders, in the parking lot of a Las Vegas hotel. The car contained the murder weapon, a .22-caliber gun, whose barrel held bits of flesh matching that of John Percell. The tissue was blown back into the gun when it was fired, Sims said. A liquor bottle in the car bore Jeffrey Percell’s fingerprints.

Meanwhile, pawnshop owners from Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and Florida, will testify that Jeffrey Percell pawned jewelry belonging to his parents, Sims said.

Crain, in his opening statements, said the jewelry had been entrusted to the defendant by his parents to help finance his cross-country trip. The attorney added that such trips were common for Jeffrey Percell, who lived off and on with his parents.

Further, the lawyer told jurors that his client tried to call his parents from Vermont but could not reach them. When he learned that he was being sought, Percell voluntarily turned himself in, Crain said.

The trial was moved from Pasadena to the larger Van Nuys court system, which handles cases expected to last longer than two weeks.