Prosecution Vilifies Thornton as Coldblooded

Piecing together six weeks of testimony, prosecutors Wednesday portrayed Mark Scott Thornton as a coldblooded killer and consummate liar who executed Westlake nurse Kellie O’ Sullivan, even as he led her to believe he would spare her life.

During closing arguments, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael K. Frawley urged a Ventura County Superior Court jury to convict the Thousand Oaks man of first-degree murder and a special circumstance that could put him in the gas chamber.

The prosecutor also criticized the defense for characterizing the killing as a tragedy, a word that he said does not apply to the Thornton case.

“What this was, was a murder,” Frawley said. “It was more than that. It was an execution.”

Defense attorneys, scheduled to give their closing arguments today, sat quietly as Frawley blasted their case and their client. Thornton, 20, also sat impassively at the defense table, keeping his eyes focused mostly on the prosecutor who was vilifying him.

The jury is expected to begin deliberating Monday. Prosecutors, who have the burden of proof in the case, get a final chance to rebut defense arguments Friday.

Trying his first death-penalty case, the 35-year-old Frawley wove a lengthy tale of how the nurse came to her death. Throughout the argument, several jurors nodded in apparent agreement with the prosecution’s version of the crime.

Tying together testimony from more than 100 witnesses, Frawley said Thornton had lost control of his life almost a year before the nurse was slain.

O’Sullivan was killed just because her attacker wanted to steal her Ford Explorer truck and did not want the theft reported right away, Frawley argued, adding that it is hard to believe that someone would be killed over a car.

Calling the murder premeditated, Frawley conceded that Thornton probably did not decide to kill his victim until after abducting her.

O’Sullivan, he said, just happened to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

To prove premeditation, however, he concentrated his argument on Thornton’s actions in the weeks prior to the shooting death.

Frawley noted that Thornton had been telling friends for a least a month beforehand that he needed to leave town because the police were after him. According to court testimony, the defendant had violated his juvenile probation and cashed more than $3,000 in forged and bounced checks.

The day before the nurse’s murder, Thornton and a friend went to Camarillo, where they bought the fatal bullets.

O’Sullivan encountered the gun-toting defendant outside a Thousand Oaks pet store at about 2 p.m. the day she died, Frawley said.

He drove the woman into the Santa Monica Mountains, punching and backhanding her along the way as she tried to get the gun from him, Frawley said.

He reminded the jury of a witness who testified to seeing a couple fitting the descriptions of Thornton and O’Sullivan in a small black truck on Hampshire Road, heading in the general direction of the mountains. The witness testified that the male driver was beating his female passenger, who appeared to be reaching for something in his lap or on the console.

Frawley said Thornton took O’Sullivan to an area of the mountains he was familiar with, near a spot where he had partied with friends on several occasions.

He said O’Sullivan had decided to remain calm, rather than infuriate her much younger assailant, in hopes that he would steal her vehicle and leave her be.

But after pulling off Mulholland Highway near a mountainside grotto, Thornton forced O’Sullivan to crawl into the alcove. Her purse was still strapped around her shoulder, her sunglasses still on her face--all signs that she did not struggle, Frawley said.

“The evidence suggests she still had some hope of living,” he said. “He probably told her something like, ‘Get in there and you’re going to stay in there for an hour while I make my getaway.’

“She went in there,” Frawley continued, “and boom, boom, boom. He killed her.”

Later, Frawley said: “He had her literally crawling to her death.”

After the shooting, Thornton drove to a tattoo shop in Simi Valley, where he had his former girlfriend’s name emblazoned on his right shoulder.

“You would expect him to be shaking, trembling if it was an accident or some kind of tragedy,” Frawley said. “But to go to a tattoo artist and exchange chitchat?”

Later that night, Thornton used O’Sullivan’s truck to kidnap the ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Campbell. The two were on the road for the next five days, mostly camping in Northern California, before Thornton was arrested in Reno.

At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of O’Sullivan’s truck and the weapon used to murder her, Frawley said.

“Today we are talking about assigning responsibility,” Frawley said. “We are not going to call this a tragedy anymore. We are fixing blame.”

He also told the jury not to be fooled by Thornton’s denial of murder to his grandmother and police shortly after his arrest.

“This guy lies as easily as he breathes, ladies and gentlemen,” Frawley said. “It just rolls off his lips.”