Two Portrayals : Closing Arguments Made in Wife’s Murder-Solicitation Trial

Conflicting portraits of Mary Ellen Samuels, known around the courthouse as the “green widow,” emerged Thursday as a prosecutor and defense attorney gave closing arguments in a murder-solicitation trial that has had all the elements of a trashy soap opera.

Samuels, 45, earned the moniker because she allegedly hired a hit man to kill her husband in December, 1988, then spent nearly all her $500,000 inheritance before she was charged with his and the hit man’s murder 13 months later.

She went on trial in late March, charged with two counts of murder--one count for the husband, the other for the alleged hit man--conspiracy, soliciting murder and a single count of attempted murder. If convicted of first-degree murder, Samuels could face the death penalty.

Testifying in her own defense, Samuels denied involvement in the slayings.

When the jury begins deliberations next week it will consider evidence that includes tales of love, lust, murder and treachery that have poured forth from the witness stand, along with testimony about steamy love letters, shopping sprees for lingerie and fur coats, limousines, cocaine parties, hit men, insurance checks, fast cars, child molestation, male strippers, mother-daughter cheesecake shots and a talking parrot who insulted the police.

On Thursday, the lawyers tried to supply the meaning behind the lurid details.

“This is a story of murder, twice told,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi explained to the six men and six women on the jury. She portrayed Samuels as a greedy and manipulative woman who hired a hit man to kill her estranged husband after calculating that he was “worth more to her dead than alive.”

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The attempted murder charge stems from an incident a month before Robert Samuels was slain. Testimony varied on whether the weapon used to assault him was a pink lead pipe, a pink broomstick or, as Samuels claimed, a rubber dog toy.

Later, Maurizi alleged, Samuels orchestrated the hit man’s slaying at the hands of other friends she had met in bars, people the prosecutor described as “alcoholics who didn’t care about anything.”

Robert Samuels, a 40-year-old motion picture camera assistant who worked on the films “Lethal Weapon” and “Heaven Can Wait,” was shot to death in his Northridge home. The day after his body was found, the suspected hit man took out a $25,000 life insurance policy, naming Samuels’ daughter, Nicole, beneficiary, Maurizi said.

Six months later, alleged hit man James R. Bernstein was strangled, beaten and dumped along a highway in an isolated canyon in Ventura County.

Saying it was “an honor” to defend Samuels, attorney Phil Nameth picked apart the testimony of his client’s former friends, who were witnesses for the prosecution. He pointed out that many of them--including the pair who confessed to killing Bernstein--cooperated in exchange for plea bargains for lesser sentences or grants of immunity that spared them from prosecution for their roles in the slayings. The prosecution, he said, “made a deal with the devil.”

But Maurizi urged the jury: “Don’t write off this case. Don’t write off any of the testimony because these are people you wouldn’t invite home to dinner. Don’t judge them, judge their testimony.”

Nameth pointed out that there was no evidence of any payments to hit men in Samuels’ bank records, observing, “Of course it’s not going to say ‘Joe Schmo, hit man. Thanks for the hit.’ ”

Instead, Nameth said, “This has become a case of family values.” He contended that the prosecution used Samuels’ lifestyle and spending habits after her husband’s death to “dirty her up” because she had no criminal record.

The defense attorney maintained that she was a victim of domestic abuse and that Robert Samuels sexually molested Nicole Samuels since she was 12. According to testimony, the daughter approached four people while she was still in high school and asked them for a gun to kill Robert Samuels.

“It’s not ‘Leave It to Beaver.’ It’s not ‘Make Room for Daddy.’ This was a dysfunctional family,” Nameth said. “Mr. Samuels had a drinking problem. Mr. Samuels had a physical and sexual abuse problem.”

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Maurizi said the evidence did not support an abuse excuse, which she contended was “manufactured” by Samuels and her daughter.

“Where is the abuse? Where is the alcoholism? Where is the abuse of Nicole?” she said, arguing that those allegations came only from Samuels and her daughter, and were not corroborated by other evidence.

Samuels spent the $500,000 inheritance like it was water, Maurizi said. “We’ve got fur coats and limousines and trashy lingerie and a big birthday bash and a $50,000 Porsche, insurance policies, and the spending of all that money,” Maurizi said. “We’ve got trips to Las Vegas and Cancun and San Francisco.”

But, the prosecutor noted, she didn’t spend a dime on her husband’s headstone.

While such behavior was “suspicious,” Maurizi said, “it wasn’t a crime. She almost got away with the perfect murder.”

But choosing Bernstein to kill her husband was Samuels’ downfall, the prosecutor said. Just as he was weak enough to succumb to her manipulations--he was easily intimidated by police, she said.

The prosecutor pointed to three pieces of key evidence:

* Bernstein’s wallet was found in Samuels’ new Porsche when she was arrested for his murder in January, 1990, she said.

* Samuels made no mention of abuse in a “Dear John” letter she wrote Robert Samuels when she left him in late 1986. Instead, Samuels wrote: “. . . It seems strange that we have been married for just about 7 years and I don’t know you at all! I wanted to sit down with you and tell you that I feel (you probably do too) our marriage has gone completely stale . . .

“I wanted to get a few groceries--you take & hide the checkbook. . . . I could see how much money was left in the checkbook--your (sic) not my father & I resent being treated like a child! This business about your being boss is not for me!”

* A list Samuels wrote on the back of a Christmas card shortly before her arrest, the prosecutor said, most accurately reflects what she was thinking as police closed in: “Nicole-gun (molesting). People are saying I did. . . . Nailed me for Bob, want me for Jim.”