Courthouse Slaying of Ex-Wife Told

Testifying in his own defense, former Woodland Hills physician Harry Zelig described for a jury two years of divorce court torment that ended when he “exploded like a volcano,” fatally shooting his former wife at the downtown civil courthouse.

Zelig, a pasty, portly 50-year-old who is taking medication for depression, high blood pressure and heart disease, said he did not remember pulling the trigger and shooting his ex-wife, Eileen, in the crowded courthouse on Sept. 1, 1995.

Instead, when their eyes met as he rode up an escalator, “the gun went off,” Zelig said. He recalled that the gun had clattered down the escalator steps as he continued his ride, staring down at his fallen former wife.

Zelig, on trial for first-degree murder, is seeking a lesser conviction, such as manslaughter. His lawyer, Edward Rucker, contends Zelig was pushed to the brink, then snapped under the stress of an obsessive divorce that more closely resembled a legal war.

But the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Slavitt, maintains Zelig cut off his support payments, then planned the killing so his former wife wouldn’t get any more money from him.

Prosecution witnesses, including co-workers and acquaintances, earlier had testified that Zelig spoke about his desire to kill his wife for more than a year before he fired a single round from a .38-caliber revolver, nicking her jugular vein.

It was the bloody denouement to a shredded marriage that began to unravel when Zelig’s diabetes made him impotent, he testified. By the time the couple’s final divorce settlement had come through, both were taking Prozac and seeing therapists. He had lost his job and spent much of his time sitting around the pool at his apartment complex. Still, the battle over money continued.

To show how she had hounded him, Zelig’s defense played an answering-machine tape of her threats to go to police and file charges against him, as she had in the past.

Zelig’s memory may have seemed fuzzy on specifics of the shooting itself, but he recalled in detail his 40-year-old ex-wife’s “taunts” as she followed him from courtroom to courtroom during the final moments of her life. They were seeking a judge to resolve a dispute that arose after she seized his car to cover past-due alimony and child-support payments.

“She was talking in a regular voice, like she was sharing this wonderful information she had,” he testified, describing her tone as “cheerful.” He recalled she vowed to go to law school to continue their divorce battle.

“I’m making it my career,” she said, according to Zelig’s testimony. “Why don’t you give me the money? Give me the money. You’re not going to get away with this,” he recalled her as saying.

Added Zelig: “The entire way down that hallway, Eileen was five feet behind me, talking to me, saying I wasn’t a man anymore.”

Finally, at an escalator, Zelig said he turned and told her, “Eileen, please, if you don’t stop you’re going to kill me.”

Then, he said, “She just laughed, like, ‘Ha! You finally get it. You die and I get $600,000.”

She was referring to an insurance policy on his life, Zelig said. He said he carried the gun to protect himself while riding the bus.

“The next thing that I remember is that I exploded,” he testified before a hushed courtroom. Although he continued to show no emotion, the pace of his words quickened:

“It was like a fury I’d never felt in my life,” he said matter-of-factly. “My head blew up.”

“I made eye contact with Eileen, and the gun went off.”

Earlier, prosecutors had played a tape-recorded statement by the couple’s daughter, Lisa, who was 6 years old when she saw the shooting.

Lisa said she had been holding her mother’s hand by an escalator when her father pulled a gun out of his suit and fired it.

“He didn’t say anything,” the child, now 8, recalled. “She just screamed. . . . He ran up the stairs . . . I started crying.”

Prosecutor Slavitt’s cross-examination begins today.