Defendant Recalls Killing Man He Says Raped Him

Foundry worker Scott Andrew Stockwell testified Wednesday that he seized a rubber mallet and fatally pummeled an Irvine tire store owner in 1983 because the man sexually assaulted him and then wouldn’t let him leave.

Stockwell, 34, said “everything kind of went black” as he hammered Boyd William Finkel, who had picked up Stockwell hitchhiking. Stockwell said he tried to escape Finkel’s house through the garage after the alleged sexual assault.

“I grabbed the mallet and confronted him with it. I told him to back off,” Stockwell said in a low voice, as he took the witness stand in Orange County Superior Court. “He came at me and I hit him.”

Stockwell said the fatal attack occurred after Finkel fed him a string of potent cocktails possibly spiked with drugs and, with the help of another man, held him down and sexually attacked him in a bedroom.

Stockwell is charged with first-degree murder and faces up to 25 years to life in state prison if he is convicted. The prosecutor has said Stockwell lied when first confronted by police and repeatedly changed his story to cover his tracks.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Debora Lynn Lloyd declined to comment on Stockwell’s testimony. In her opening statement two weeks ago, Lloyd dismissed Stockwell’s account to police as full of lies and inconsistencies.

But Stockwell’s defense lawyer sought to portray the 39-year-old Finkel as a sexual predator, and he compared Stockwell’s violent reaction to that of a rape victim.

“This case is about perversion and violent physical attacks and how normal people react to them,” defense attorney Jon M. Alexander said Wednesday during the defense opening statement.

Finkel’s shirtless body was found a week later in the trunk of his car in his garage on Lackhaven Circle. But it took police nearly a decade to catch Stockwell, who lived in Wisconsin with a wife and daughter when he was arrested in 1993.

Stockwell, who lived in Oxnard and worked sporadically in construction at the time, testified he was hitchhiking to San Diego when Finkel gave him a ride. Stockwell said it got dark and he agreed to spend the night at Finkel’s home. He said Finkel offered to let him use the shower and washing machine.

Stockwell testified that he drank four or five beers and an equal number of strong cocktails of gin and orange juice. But he said he felt unusually “woozy” when he went to the garage to check on his clothes.

Stockwell said Finkel and an unidentified man grabbed him as he came inside and carried him to a bedroom. The second man held him down as Finkel pulled off Stockwell’s pants and sexually assaulted him, Stockwell said. He said the two attackers retreated to the living room while he sat alone for at least 30 minutes. The unidentified man left.

Stockwell testified that when he tried to leave, Finkel blocked the door and chased him into the garage. The two tussled briefly and, Stockwell said, he grabbed the mallet and began swinging.

“I just kind of saw red and everything kind of went black,” Stockwell said.

Stockwell said he put Finkel’s body in the trunk of a Cadillac parked in the garage. “I was scared. I just didn’t want him laying there in the middle of the house,” Stockwell said. He said he didn’t call police because he feared murder charges.

Stockwell drove away in a separate car. He and a friend from Oxnard left the next day for Montana, where they later dumped the car on a logging road.

The slaying went unsolved for more than nine years until a new computerized fingerprint database in Montana yielded a match police had been hunting. Police arrested Stockwell in Marinette, Wis. He was working in a foundry.