Defense Alleges Frame-Up in Simi Bombing : Courts: The attorney for a man charged with attempted murder says evidence will point to ‘some other individual.’

A Moorpark man accused of trying to kill a Simi Valley couple with a pipe bomb is the victim of a frame-up, his attorney said Tuesday, adding that she will show who the real culprit is.

As the county’s first bombing trial in at least 20 years began in Ventura County Superior Court, Deputy Public Defender Jean L. Farley promised jurors that her evidence will “point to the culpability of some other individual” than her client, James R. McKeever.

“You will not only have reasonable doubt, but you will believe that someone else did this, and that you know who it is,” Farley said in her opening statement. And she implied that one of the bomb victims, John Monroe, was involved in the alleged frame-up

Monroe, 34, and his wife, Charlene Mayer, 33, were injured Nov. 21 when a pipe bomb tossed through their bedroom window exploded at the foot of their bed. McKeever, 43, was arrested later that day and is accused of two counts of premeditated attempted murder.

In her opening statement Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Donna W. Thonis said McKeever was immediately a suspect in the bombing. His wife, Karen Dunlop, had once been married to Monroe, and for nearly four years she and McKeever had waged “an obsessive campaign of harassment” against Monroe, the prosecutor said.

For example, Thonis said, McKeever and Dunlop filed complaints about Monroe with his landlord, with Simi Valley code enforcement officials, and with the Franchise Tax Board. The goal, she said, was to persuade Monroe to give up his 50% share of custody of the son he had by Dunlop.

At one point, Thonis said, Monroe received an anonymous letter that she suggested was from McKeever. “True to my word,” the letter said, “I have not given up my relentless pursuit of you.”

Defense attorney Farley, however, told the jurors that they will “see and compare typewriters, and you will know who wrote that letter.”

She did not name Monroe as the author, but she denounced him “a pathological liar” who has falsely tried to portray her client as a “violent, explosive, crazy kook.”

Prosecutor Thonis made much of the fact that investigators went to McKeever’s garage and found duct tape, gasoline, propane containers and a bleach bottle--the same materials used to construct the bomb. But Farley said that if McKeever had been the bomber, he would have gotten rid of such evidence.

“Why would he leave incriminating materials in the garage?” Farley said. She told jurors that Monroe had a key to the garage, and promised to show that Monroe had the same type of duct tape and “knew of its flame-retardant properties.”

Outside court, Thonis declined to say whether investigators uncovered any evidence that Monroe was involved in the bombing or in an attempt to frame McKeever.

Farley said she also will present medical evidence suggesting that McKeever’s chronic back ailment would have prevented him from tossing the bomb into the bedroom. “I think that by itself is the reasonable doubt in this case,” she said.

McKeever has attended several court proceedings on a gurney because of his back problems. But for the trial he is wearing a special back brace that allows him to sit in a wheelchair.

The trial in Judge Allan L. Steele’s courtroom is expected to last about five weeks. Farley said Tuesday that McKeever will testify.