Jurors Hear Tuffree Tape on Shooting

Only hours after he shot a Simi Valley police officer to death, a wounded Daniel Allan Tuffree looked up at a psychologist questioning him and said in a contemplative voice: “Right now, I am a murderer.”

“Could have been worse,” he continued during a taped interview played for jurors Wednesday. “Could have been multiple people.”

As Tuffree sat quietly between his defense attorneys, his recorded voice boomed through the courtroom as prosecutors played excerpts of a three-hour interview he gave authorities beginning in a hospital emergency room immediately after his gunfight with police.

The former schoolteacher had just finished describing his educational career, including earning two master’s degrees and completing all the work but his dissertation for a PhD, when he mused to psychologist Rex Beaber about his sudden change of fortune.

Tuffree, 49, is on trial for killing Officer Michael Clark on Aug. 4, 1995, and faces a possible death sentence.

He is also charged with armed assault and attempted murder for shooting at another officer who came to his house that day after reports that Tuffree was taking Valium, drinking alcohol and was possibly suicidal.

For nearly two hours Wednesday, prosecutors played portions of Tuffree’s extensive interview as jurors followed along on copies of a 218-page transcript that attorneys kept secret until Wednesday.

The taped portion played for jurors began in an ambulance en route from Columbia Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks and was concluded later at Ventura County Medical Center, where Tuffree was transferred for treatment of gunshot wounds.

During the gunfight with police, Tuffree barricaded himself inside his home, until officers stormed through his back door amid a cloud of tear gas and smoke.

The tape begins with Tuffree being read his Miranda rights amid garbled traffic noise during the ambulance trip. Tuffree soon begins to recount the events leading to his deadly confrontation that afternoon.

He had trouble sleeping and started drinking from a jug of wine at about 9:30 a.m. on the day of the shooting, Tuffree told Beaber. He would lie down and nap for a while, he said, and then wake up to drink some more.

“That was going to be my agenda for the day,” he said on the tape, adding that he had also taken a Valium and drank a few beers.

*

Later in the afternoon, Tuffree told Beaber, he heard a noise that may have been a knock at his door.

“I looked out,” he said in the interview, “and I saw a policeman coming through my [backyard] gate.”

In a clear yet strong voice, Tuffree told Beaber that he did not want to argue with the officer but was angry that police had entered his backyard without permission.

“I was just going to hide from the cop,” Tuffree said. “I didn’t want any confrontation.”

But under Beaber’s combative questioning, Tuffree admitted that at the same time he decided to grab one of his handguns from a gym bag on the floor to intimidate and scare the officer away.

“But I didn’t intend to use it,” Tuffree said.

As he was standing in the kitchen with the loaded weapon hanging at his left side, Clark caught sight of him through the kitchen window, Tuffree told Beaber.

“I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” Tuffree said on the tape. “And then I said, ‘Will you please get off my property? You don’t have a warrant.’

“His response was, ‘We have come here to check on you for a drinking and drug problem,’ ” Tuffree said. “I said to him, ‘No, I don’t have a drinking or drug problem.’ ”

At that point, Tuffree said Clark demanded to see his hands and he complied by placing the gun on the counter.

“I was still trying to avoid any incident,” he said in a slightly raised voice. “The trigger was not pointed at him.”

*

What happened next, Tuffree said, erupted in split seconds. And the following sequence of events is the critical point of contention between prosecutors and defense lawyers.

“He immediately backed up and drew his gun, and fired in through the window,” Tuffree said of Clark. “He fired at least three shots and then I began to return fire.”

When Clark realized he had no cover, Tuffree said, the officer darted in front of the kitchen window and fired an additional seven to eight rounds. Tuffree said he responded by firing two to four rounds as Clark ran from one side of the window to the other.

“That is when I hit him,” Tuffree told Beaber.

A forensic psychologist who interviews suspects for the district attorney’s office, Beaber challenged Tuffree at this point in the interview--igniting a series of confrontational exchanges between the two in the emergency room.

Beaber told jurors he was called by authorities that night to participate in the interview with Tuffree and Simi Valley Det. Robert Hopkins.

“Didn’t you point the gun at him?” Beaber asked Tuffree.

“That is not true at all,” he replied in a passionate yet exacerbated tone.

“Are you telling me he shot first?” Beaber asked a moment later.

“Yes,” Tuffree said.

But Beaber pressed on during his interrogation of the murder suspect, repeatedly asking what his intention was when he grabbed a handgun out of the gym bag and why Tuffree did not turn himself over to authorities at the moment Clark drew his gun.

“Why didn’t you drop the gun and surrender?” Beaber asked forcefully.

*

“Because I was tired of the harassment,” Tuffree replied. Earlier in the interview he had made comments about being harassed by Simi Valley police when they seized his .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol during a 1992 query into reports of shots fired in his neighborhood. “I never intended to kill anybody.”

Crime scene investigators have testified that ballistics tests have shown Tuffree used two guns during his gunfight with police last summer: a .40-caliber Glock, which was later returned, and a .44-caliber magnum revolver.

After the gunfight with Clark and Officer Michael Pierce, Tuffree said, he collapsed and passed out. He awoke some time later, he said, covered in blood from what he described as “a terrible nightmare.”

“I was sure I was going to die,” he said.