Court Told Man Admitted Killing

The prison parolee accused of killing a pregnant Toluca Lake woman and her fetus during a robbery at a Sherman Oaks ATM admitted to his live-in girlfriend that he was responsible for the slaying, the girlfriend testified Tuesday in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

“He said he didn’t mean to do it, she just ran into the knife,” Libert J. Ellis said.

Ellis testified on the first day of a preliminary hearing for Robert Glen Jones that three days after the knife attack, Jones had asked her: “If I told you that I killed the girl, would you be scared of me?”

Ellis testified that Jones initially had said he was only kidding, but after seeing frequent TV and newspaper reports of the killing that startled the San Fernando Valley, Jones admitted that he was the killer, saying the stabbing was an accident.

Jones, 42, faces the death penalty if convicted of the March 30 slaying of Sherri Foreman, who had just withdrawn $40 from an automatic teller machine at the Great Western Bank at 13701 Riverside Drive when she was stabbed.

Foreman’s 13-week-old fetus died immediately after the attack, but Foreman clung to life for about one day and was able to give authorities a description of her attacker.

Although Van Nuys prosecutors recently charged four gang members with murder for allegedly killing a teen-ager’s 12-week-old fetus during a drive-by shooting, the prosecutor in the Foreman trial has no intention of charging Jones with killing Foreman’s fetus.

The prosecution strategy in the drive-by trial, based on a recent ruling by a California appeals court, “will not have any effect on this case,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip H. Rabichow said.

The district attorney’s office has already filed two special circumstance allegations against Jones--murder during the course of a robbery and murder after lying in wait. If convicted of either of the special charges, Jones would be sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Rabichow said he does not want to run the risk of convicting Jones and winning a severe sentence, only to have a higher court reverse the verdict on the fetus issue.

“I’m not going to take a chance. I’m not going to risk any adverse legal decision,” he said.

Jones, previously convicted of five robberies and one rape, was released from prison less than six months before Foreman was killed.

Ellis testified that she observed cuts on the palm of Jones’ hand the day after Foreman was killed.

Two days after Foreman’s death, Jones made his first admission about the stabbing, even though he tried to dismiss his confession as a joke.

“After that she came on TV, and my heart just dropped,” Ellis testified. “He said, ‘There it is, right there.’ ”

Also, Ellis testified, friends commented that Jones closely resembled the police drawing of the suspected killer that was publicized on television and in newspapers. Ellis said Jones was collecting newspaper clippings about the incident.

Jones later explained that he only wanted Foreman’s purse, “but she struggled and ran into the knife,” Ellis said.

Ellis testified that Jones appeared to be “hurt” by the slaying and that he promised to surrender to police “in about two weeks or so.”

Jones was arrested at the Woodman Avenue apartment he shared with Ellis eight days after Foreman was killed.

While he has been held in County Jail without bail, Jones has mailed several letters to Ellis, according to her testimony.

“I (messed) up real good this time, and there’s no one else to blame but myself for everything,” Jones wrote in one excerpt read in court Tuesday by the prosecutor.

Susan Ann Soto testified Tuesday that when she tried to use the ATM machine moments before Foreman did, Jones confronted her and asked for money as she walked from a parking lot behind the bank to the money machine on Riverside Drive.

After dropping the bank card she planned to use to obtain the cash, Soto said, “I took a few steps back, turned around and ran.”

Soto said she got into her car and drove away. But while she was waiting to turn on to Riverside Drive, she could see Jones in her rear-view mirror and a white car pulled in to the bank’s parking lot, nearly striking her front fender, she said.

Foreman, who drove a white BMW, used the ATM machine and was stabbed there only minutes later.

Several other witnesses said Jones was loitering in the area of the bank up to two hours before Foreman was killed.

Jones’ preliminary hearing will continue today. At the conclusion of the proceeding, Municipal Judge Leslie A. Dunn is expected to rule on whether Jones will be sent to Superior Court to stand trial for the killing.

If he is, Rabichow said it will take several months before prosecutors decide whether to seek the death penalty.