Murder Defendant a Study in Contradictions : Trial: Prosecutor questions Mary Ellen Samuels’ change in lifestyle after receiving $500,000 as result of husband’s slaying. ‘I lived normally,’ Samuels says.

As Mary Ellen Samuels told it, she was a shy person whose spending habits changed not a whit after her husband was murdered in 1988 and she received $500,000 in insurance and inheritance.

“I paid bills. I lived like I normally did,” Samuels told a jury last week as she testified in her own defense at her murder trial in Van Nuys Superior Court. “I bought a new car.”

But a different portrait of Samuels emerged Monday after she endured a prosecutor’s cross-examination in the double murder-solicitation case.

For starters, the new car was a $75,000 Porsche.

Samuels, 45, denied that she hired a hit man to kill her estranged husband, then two other hit men to do in the executioner. She has testified that the prosecution witnesses--many of them once her closest friends--all lied when they linked her to the murders of her husband, motion picture camera operator Robert Samuels, 40, and the suspected killer, reputed cocaine dealer James Bernstein, 27.

Under Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi’s questioning, Samuels stuck to her story that $500,000 did not change her lifestyle, even if she did spend most of it in about nine months.

But as the cross-examination wore on, Samuels’ description of living like she “normally did” seemed to fit the dictionary definition of life in the fast lane: limousines, fur coats, the Porsche, nightclubs, a country club birthday bash, a condo in Cancun, trips to Las Vegas and San Francisco and loans to friends.

Earlier, she testified that when her husband was alive, “there never seemed to be enough money.”

Maurizi’s questions made it clear she considers Samuels anything but a demure defendant.

“You testified you are very shy,” Maurizi stated, then asked Samuels about a photograph taken months after she was widowed. In the snapshot, she is wearing nothing but $20,000 in cold cash and a smile.

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Samuels responded that she had had a few drinks when the picture--her boyfriend’s idea--was snapped in a motel room in Cancun. Her testimony contradicted that of the boyfriend, Dean Groover, who earlier told the jury that the pinup pose had been both his and Samuels’ idea and that Samuels had not been drinking.

The prosecutor pressed Samuels about the time she showed up at a boyfriend’s hotel room, wearing only a fur coat and teddy, and about “cheesecake” photographs that Samuels insisted were taken for a mother-daughter contest.

Samuels was short on specifics about the mother-daughter contest. Last week she testified she wore a teddy for the photos. Monday, she objected to the term cheesecake and denied wearing the teddy.

There were other contradictions, large and small.

Last week Samuels said she left her husband in October, 1986, then changed it to November. On Monday, she said it was in October.

Maurizi dug into the credit card records, the insurance records, the divorce papers, even the telephone records in confronting Samuels. She asked the defendant why Bernstein, a reputed cocaine dealer, would keep her name and Social Security and bank account numbers in a notebook.

“I don’t know,” Samuels said.

But the chief topic was money. Maurizi, alleging that Samuels killed for financial gain, is seeking the death penalty.

Samuels conceded that she received about $500,000 in insurance proceeds and real estate after her husband’s death. Had they divorced, she said they had agreed that she would receive about $30,000 and support payments of $1,200 a month.

Within a month after her husband died, Samuels traveled twice to Las Vegas. On one trip she charged two fur coats, worth about $1,600.

“One of those was a full-length coat, the other was a jacket. If they were real fur, it would have been more than that for one,” Samuels explained.

She had outfits custom made at a store called Trashy Lingerie, running up bills of $1,500, four for $1,100, one for $800 and another for $900.

“Do you still say your lifestyle didn’t change?” Maurizi persisted.

“Well, I got to do more things, naturally.”