LOS ANGELES : Alibi in 1963 Murder Case Challenged by Prosecutor

The prosecutor in a 30-year-old murder case introduced evidence Wednesday that he said “without equivocation destroys” the defendant’s main defense--his alibi.

Vernon M. Robinson, 48, has contended since his arrest in 1991 that he could not have killed Thora Marie Rose in Hollywood on Oct. 3, 1963, because he was in Navy basic training in San Diego then and had been for nearly three months.

But during testimony Wednesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul W. Turley showed him a letter he wrote in 1966 in which he stated that his military training lasted just a month. The letter does not mention dates.

Turley also produced Navy documents that he contends show that Robinson would have been through with basic training on Sept. 1, 1963, weeks before Rose was killed. Robinson, however, did not waver from his testimony that he was in San Diego and not Los Angeles when Rose was slain.

He is linked to the crime by his fingerprints, which police maintain were found at the murder scene. Authorities were led to him after they put fingerprints from old murder cases through a relatively new computer system.