Green’s Ex-Wife Insists He Beat Her

Dianna D’Aiello insisted Tuesday that her ex-husband beat her, but conceded she could not be sure Kevin Lee Green caused the death of her unborn baby--a crime that kept Green in prison for nearly 17 years.

D’Aiello said she is still trying to reconcile her vivid memories of the September 1979 night of the attack on her with the stunning news that a serial killing suspect, Gerald Parker, has allegedly confessed to the bludgeoning. The attack left D’Aiello in a coma for a month and killed the 9-month fetus she was carrying.

“Right now, I’m just in shock,” said D’Aiello, now 36, struggling to hold back tears. “What I see 17 years ago was Kevin hitting me. . . . Still this is what I see now.”

D’Aiello had little sympathy to offer to her ex-husband, who was released from prison Thursday after an Orange County judge declared him a victim of a legal system that wrongly accused him.

She shook her head at the outpouring of support for Green, including offers of jobs, cash, the possibility of book and movie deals, and a stay in Cabo San Lucas with assistance from the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, pastor of Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, who was touched by Green’s plight.

“Is he a victim? No, not in my mind,” D’Aiello told a group of reporters and TV crews at a local park.

Though her ex-husband has made no attempt to contact her, D’Aiello said she considers the former Marine a threat and intends to seek a restraining order against him because she fears retaliation.

D’Aiello and Green were 21-year-old newlyweds at the time of the attack.

She described Green as a drug user during their brief marriage, who concocted unusual ways to abuse her. She alleged that he pocketed nearly $5,000 that Marines at the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station had collected for her after the attack.

D’Aiello alleged that Green once slipped her a tab of LSD during a kiss on the lips when she was pregnant, and that he once dragged her by her breast across their Tustin apartment.

D’Aiello’s mother, Pat, said Green never acted like a man whose wife had been brutally attacked by a stranger and that he was callous to his young wife while she was recovering in the hospital.

Attorney Ronald Brower, who is representing Green, called D’Aiello’s recollection of past events “absolutely false.”

“She’s already demonstrated that her memory is unreliable,” Brower said. “Do you think it’s reasonable to believe any of her assertions based on the fact that she was clearly mistaken about who her assailant was? And the answer is no.”

Authorities say they now have DNA evidence linking Parker, also a former Marine, to six killings, including the death of D’Aiello’s fetus.

In addition to her unborn daughter, D’Aiello lost most of her hearing and most of her sense of smell in the attack, and often has trouble writing or articulating a thought. She said the most painful period is each September, the month in which she lost her fetus.

During Tuesday’s news conference, D’Aiello was flanked by her mother and her brother, who often helped her as she struggled to explain herself or to hear questions being asked.

Her brother, Curtis D’Aiello, said he found it odd that both Green and Parker were Marines. But when asked whether the family believed there may have been some way in which both men were involved in the attack, they responded with a quick: “No comment at this time.”

Dianna D’Aiello said her memory came back to her slowly after a month in a coma, often after something visual jogged her memory.

It was several months before she saw the scar where the fetus was removed by Caesarean section--and she realized she had been pregnant. Then, in early December 1979, a relative tossed a pair of keys and the memory came flooding back: She said she clearly recalled Green grabbing a hefty retractable key holder and pounding her over the head after she refused to have sex.

Green’s recollection of that night is very different. He testified that he and his wife had consensual sex and he left the house to get a cheeseburger at a Jack in the Box. He said he returned to find his wife bludgeoned.

Curtis D’Aiello said Tuesday that he had seen Green on the day his sister was attacked and that Green had admitted using LSD and marijuana and also being drunk. Brower said his client had been drinking that day, but was not high on drugs.

D’Aiello insisted Tuesday that she clearly recalled Green attacking her and had not flashed back to another violent episode.

“He did hit me that night,” she said quietly.

Transcripts from Green’s 1980 trial show that jurors convicted Green almost entirely on the basis of D’Aiello’s testimony--despite gaps in her memory, incoherent statements and contradictory remarks. There were no eyewitnesses to the crime and scant physical evidence.

The jurors also disregarded testimony from four witnesses who claimed they saw a stranger loitering near the couple’s apartment around the time of attack.

In clipped, halting testimony, D’Aiello told the jurors that her memory was blank for weeks following the attack. She said she couldn’t remember her name, didn’t know how she hurt her head, wondered why there was a long scar down her stomach.

“At first, nothing. I didn’t even know my name. I didn’t know nothing,” D’Aiello testified. “Then it was getting better. And then my Mom and Dad and Kevin, my brothers, then finally it was more better. It was better.”

D’Aiello testified that she and Green had been fighting because he had gone out drinking with friends even though she was on the verge of giving birth. She said that when he returned, Green pushed her down on the bed and tried to have sex with her.

“And that’s when he hit me with metal keys,” she testified.

She remembered nothing after that, she said. “He got me,” she said. “I was out.”

At one point in the trial, prosecutor Cliff Harris asked D’Aiello about her memory.

“Dianna, as you sit here now do you feel that your memory, that you definitely have your memory and it’s not something else?”

“It’s mine,” she replied. “Everything--I know everything. I mean, I know--go, forget it.”

But D’Aiello changed her testimony at some points. Under oath at a pretrial hearing, D’Aiello testified that her attacker took off all his clothes, and she described parts of his body. At trial, she said her attacker was fully clothed.

“I don’t remember, I just don’t know,” she said when asked about the contradiction. “Right now, I think he had his clothes on.”

A psychiatrist hired by D’Aiello’s family and the Orange County district attorney’s office testified that D’Aiello’s memory was sound. But when Green’s lawyer asked to have an independent psychiatrist examine D’Aiello, a judge refused.

The refusal became the main issue in Green’s appeal.

In convicting Green, jurors discounted testimony from the defendant and three others that a stranger was loitering on the apartment grounds at the time of the attack.

Green, who is white, and the three neighbors testified that they saw a black or dark-skinned man with white pants and a dark shirt hanging around the apartment complex that night. Green said he saw the man before and after the attack; the others saw him afterward.

“He was hanging around the wash house,” Green’s next-door neighbor, Don Belding, testified.

Several neighbors testified that they heard screams coming from the Greens’ apartment that night but that they ignored them because they often heard the couple fighting.