Bryant Prosecutor Says Fear Is Behind Witnesses’ Silence : Trial: Nearly a dozen have testified they can’t recall statements made to police about drug-dealing Family members accused of murders. Deputy D. A. says the memory lapses are telling evidence.

Six years after four people were shot to death at a crack house in Lake View Terrace, the Bryant Family cocaine syndicate still is powerful enough to inspire memory loss in nearly a dozen witnesses at the murder trial for four Family leaders, a prosector told a jury on Monday.

Even so, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Dale Davidson, authorities had amassed enough physical evidence, reinforced by testimony from an insider turned informant, for the jury to find the four men guilty of murder.

“These men are extremely, extremely dangerous men--all of them,” Davidson said in his closing argument, laying out the prosecution’s evidence after a three-month trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Family co-leader Stanley (Peanut Head) Bryant and three others--LeRoy (Slim) Wheeler, Donald (Duke) Smith and Jon Settle--are charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 28, 1988, shooting deaths of two drug rivals, a woman and a child at a Family-owned money-counting house on Wheeler Avenue.

Davidson urged the jury to focus on the testimony of the chief prosecution witness, Family money-counter James (Jay Baby) Williams, who said he was inside the crack house with the defendants when the killings occurred. Williams testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution.

But Davidson also told the jurors that, in this case, what they didn’t hear on the witness stand was as important as what they heard. One after another, he said, witnesses failed to remember on the witness stand statements they had made to police, in some cases, just days before. Some of those statements were tape-recorded and played to the jury.

Fear was a primary reason for the memory lapses, the prosecutor said.

One witness told prosecutors, “I like living,” Davidson said.

Another, a mid-level Family dealer, offered this explanation, according to Davidson, who quoted a transcribed statement:

“Who you’re dealing with, you know, you’re dealing with people that have basically run Pacoima all their lives. Since I was on my little skateboard, these were people you always looked up to, always.”

Other witnesses testified they didn’t recognize the four defendants and had never seen them before. One denied hearing his own tape-recorded voice, even as it was played to the jury.

“This is the biggest, most ruthless drug organization you’ll wish you’d never heard of,” Davidson told the jury.

For more than 20 years, he said, the Bryant Family has controlled the drug trade in the Pacoima area through intimidation, beatings, car-bombings, shootings and murder.

A 1982 murder case provided the motive for the crack-house slayings six years later, the prosecutor said. Stanley Bryant, his brother Jeff, who heads the organization, and a Family hit man named Andre Armstrong were charged with killing Kenneth Gentry, according to prosecutors. Gentry had vandalized a Bryant van after complaining he had bought bad drugs from the Family.

During the Gentry case, Davidson said, prosecutors also had problems finding cooperative witnesses with reliable memories, and only Armstrong was convicted. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but his conviction was overturned.

When he was freed, he demanded a piece of the Family drug trade, which was raking in about $1.6 million every three months, Davidson said.

Bryant and the others lured Armstrong to the crack house, saying they would meet with him to discuss his demands, prosecutors said. Armstrong was so unconcerned, Davidson said, he was unarmed and smoking a cigarette when he walked into the ambush.

As he stepped through a steel cage security door, he was shot through the heart and in the the back of the head with two shotguns. An associate who accompanied Armstrong, 43-year-old James Brown, also was shot in the head, his body blown back through the front door.

Settle and Smith are accused of murdering Armstrong. Wheeler allegedly shot the woman, Loretha Anderson, and Anderson’s 2-year-old daughter, Chemise English, as they waited in the car. Another child was cut by broken glass.

Three of the four defendants testified, and Davidson spent much of the day chipping away at what he considered inconsistencies in their stories. Davidson told the jury those stories changed daily, to suit the circumstances.

Closing arguments from the defense attorneys are expected today.