Retrial to Get Under Way in 1980 ‘Acid Murder’ : Courts: Defendant will act as his own lawyer. His conviction was overturned after a ruling on his confession.

Nearly 14 years have passed since Patricia Worrell’s hopes of becoming a lawyer vaporized one August night when she opened the door of her Sylmar home to a stranger who tossed a quart of lye in her face.

Blinded and disfigured, Worrell died 10 days later, bleeding to death as the caustic chemical she had inadvertently swallowed burned through her esophagus, then destroyed an artery. She left behind a 10-year-old son, who had been awakened by her shrieks of pain.

Police and prosecutors say the attack was paid for by Worrell’s jilted fiance, who was inside playing cards with her when two men, one carrying a glass jar filled with lye, knocked on her door.

This week, the story of Worrell’s excruciating death again will be told as the retrial of Ricardo H. Robinson, one of three men convicted of first-degree murder, mayhem and conspiracy in connection with the attack, begins in a Van Nuys courtroom. Testimony begins today.

Robinson, who claims he had no role in the plot to maim Worrell, will act as his own lawyer. His 1982 conviction was overturned two years ago by a federal appeals court that ruled his confession to the crime was illegally obtained. It was his fifth appeal in the case.

Prosecutors Robert L. Cohen and Jodi Link will re-create events that happened 14 years ago--but they won’t be able to use Robinson’s 1980 statements to police. Cohen said he was surprised to locate most of the original witnesses, who, he said, “are alive and well.”

But Worrell’s older brother, Bill Dziamba, who said he attended court hearings for four years, doesn’t plan to be in court the second time around. The case has left him bitter and questioning the efficacy of the criminal justice system.

“It’s a sham,” Dziamba said in a telephone interview from his home in Ohio. “This guy threw acid in my sister’s face. God, this thing. . . . She was my baby sister She was 34 years old, and she was going to graduate from law school, and she was killed by some creep. What has this country come to?”

The so-called “acid murder” shocked the collective conscience of Los Angeles. The county supervisors posted a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the crime.

By that December, the trail led to Worrell’s former fiance, Richard Morton Gilman of Burbank, a man 10 years older than she, a man who had recently graduated from law school but had failed the bar exam.

The couple met and fell in love at the San Fernando Valley College of Law, which has since ceased operation. Worrell, who was to graduate that December, had been elected president of the student bar association.

Gilman even gave her his grandmother’s ring.

But Worrell broke off the engagement and refused to give back the ring, Cohen said. She filed a battery complaint against Gilman after they quarreled violently over the ring, but she dropped the charge.

A month before the attack, according to court records, Gilman met a prostitute in a hotel bar in Las Vegas and told her his tale of woe.

“Lamenting his lost love, he gets together with a hooker,” Cohen said. “He asked her if she knew anyone who could do a job for him. She set up a meeting with her pimp. He agreed to do the job.”

That “job” consisted of disfiguring Worrell. Gilman allegedly paid $750 to the pimp, a stuttering, some-time bounty hunter named Bobby Ray Savage.

Savage initially brought another man with him to Los Angeles for an aborted attempt at disfiguring Worrell. But the attack did not occur because she had house guests, according to court records.

He returned with Robinson, who allegedly demanded an additional $1,000 payment, which he never received, the documents say.

The year 1982 brought trials and convictions against Gilman, Robinson and Savage. All three were serving 25 years to life in state prison, and the case seemed to be forgotten, left to gather dust in the courthouse archives.

But Robinson wouldn’t give up. After losing three appeals in the state and federal courts, he wrote William Genego at USC Law Center’s Post Conviction Justice Project. Genego lost a fourth appeal before convincing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse Robinson’s conviction on the ground his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was violated.

The divided court found that Robinson had given incriminating statements to police, even after telling the officers, according to court records: “I have to get me a good lawyer. . . . Can I make a phone call?”

Under the 1966 Miranda decision, police must stop questioning a suspect who asks for a lawyer, and the prosecution cannot use any incriminating statements made after the request.

As a result, the retrial jury won’t hear Robinson’s statement, which weakens the prosecution’s case considerably.

But investigators were able to track down a star witness--Kim Bricker, the former Las Vegas prostitute who introduced Gilman to Savage. Bricker, who provided key testimony during the earlier trials after being granted immunity from prosecution, had moved to Pennsylvania, where she works for a popular candy maker.

And the prosecution has enlisted another surprise witness: Bobby Ray Savage, who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.

The prosecutors said Savage, who has lost all his appeals, has an “obvious” motive to testify: “He’s probably asking himself, ‘Why should I let this guy go free when I’m sitting in here?’ ”