Stepfather Tells of Thornton’s Early Life

The stepfather of convicted murderer Mark Scott Thornton testified Tuesday that he does not believe the defendant acted in cold blood when he fatally shot Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan 16 months ago.

But before making the statement in his two-hour testimony, Pierre Sarrazin agreed with prosecutors that only “an animal” would have shot O’Sullivan in a desolate area of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Still, before finishing his testimony at Thornton’s death-penalty trial, the stepfather backed off his strong comments.

“Do you believe that Mark murdered the nurse?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael K. Frawley asked Sarrazin.

“Yes,” Sarrazin answered.

“And do you think that that was a cold-blooded thing to do?”

“In this case, no,” Sarrazin said.

A jury is hearing evidence to determine whether Thornton should die for the September, 1993, killing or spend his life in prison without parole.

Sarrazin was the second witness put on the stand by defense attorneys, who are trying to persuade a Superior Court jury to spare the 20-year-old defendant’s life.

The first witness was Markita Sarrazin, Thornton’s mother, who told the jury how her son was unprepared for adulthood because of his troubled family life.

The parents are publicly admitting their own foibles so the jury can better understand what led Thornton to shoot the nurse, said defense attorneys who seemed pleased with the testimony so far.

At the time of the murder, the defense contends, Thornton was an immature teen-ager suffering from years of parental neglect and from brain damage caused by a traumatic birth.

“He gave a brilliant picture of what family life was like for Mark,” Deputy Public Defender Howard J. Asher said after court.

Sarrazin testified that he met Thornton’s mother when the defendant was 2 years old. He said that his wife was a drug user at the time, and that he also ingested LSD and smoked pot.

Over the years, he said, he raised Thornton as if the defendant was his own child. But he believes that there was too much lying, stealing and violence in their household for Thornton to grow to be a normal adult.

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Pierre Sarrazin said that he and the defendant had a normal father-son relationship until Thornton entered high school in Los Angeles County.

At that point, Thornton seemed to become more rebellious and started to challenge his authority, Sarrazin testified. Thornton began intervening whenever Sarrazin and his wife became embroiled in fights, which happened about five times, Sarrazin said.

Sarrazin said he moved to Thousand Oaks with a woman friend after such a fight in the early 1990s. He left his wife often, and she often begged him to return, Sarrazin boasted. The stepfather drew chuckles from the jury when he described himself as a master mechanic who had no problem attracting women.

But Sarrazin acknowledged that every time he abandoned the family, Thornton seemed to have a harder time accepting him back. On each return, he noticed Thornton to be “wilder than before.”

But Sarrazin also described normal times in their household. When Thornton was 8, for example, Sarrazin said he started a Cub Scout den for Thornton and some neighborhood friends. It lasted several months.

He and Thornton also began racing remote-control cars, an activity which brought the two of them closer together until Thornton got older and the friendly games became too competitive, he said.

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Sarrazin denied suggestions that he was overly strict or that he physically abused his stepson. In hindsight, he said he should have been tougher on him.

He said he had become disappointed in Thornton even before he killed the nurse. Thornton appeared smart enough to complete complicated tasks such as rebuilding the engine on a remote-control car. But he did poorly in school and seemed generally unmotivated, he said.

He said major problems developed between he and Thornton when the teen-ager began skipping classes his sophomore year in high school.

But he said the only time he could remember hitting Thornton was shortly before the defendant was kicked out of the family’s Thousand Oaks’ home in 1992. That was after he caught Thornton siphoning gasoline out of his car, Sarrazin said.