Pohlmeier Found Insane in Strangling Wife

A Ventura County jury decided Tuesday that 92-year-old Alfred Pohlmeier was legally insane when he strangled his wife of 62 years to quiet her incessant coughing.

After deliberating one day, the jury found that Pohlmeier was suffering from two brain injuries when he choked his 86-year-old wife to death Sept. 13, 1995.

The decision means that the retired Fillmore postal worker--the oldest defendant in a murder case in county history--will be spared a prison sentence, but must spend at least six months in a state mental hospital while doctors determine the extent of his mental illness.

“He will never go to prison and he will never go back to jail,” an elated Deputy Public Defender Susan Olson said outside the courtroom after the jury returned its verdict.

“I’m very happy,” she said. “I was firmly convinced at the time this happened that he was legally insane.”

The jury’s decision comes three weeks after the same panel convicted Pohlmeier of second-degree murder for strangling his wife, Lidwina, with his bare hands in the bedroom of their mobile home.

The jury returned to Ventura County Superior Court last week for a separate sanity phase to determine whether Pohlmeier knew right from wrong when he killed her.

Juror Cindy Newton said the key piece of evidence during that proceeding came from a UCLA neurologist who identified lesions on detailed pictures of Pohlmeier’s brain.

The doctor’s testimony supported the defense theory that Pohlmeier was suffering from two brain defects at the time of his wife’s death: frontal lobe syndrome, or lesions caused by a lack of blood to the brain, and a blood clot that was pushing on the reasoning and decision-making part of his brain.

The injuries were probably caused by an earlier stroke, Olson said, and affected Pohlmeier’s ability to tell right from wrong.

The medical testimony gave the jury the explanation they needed to understand what led Pohlmeier to kill his wife, Newton said.

“The frontal lobe is responsible for judgment,” said Newton, a biologist with the California Condor Recovery Program. “I really believe he was insane at the time.”

Sitting outside the courthouse talking to reporters, Newton said it was difficult for jurors to set aside their sympathy for Pohlmeier, a frail-looking, gray-haired man who sat hunched over in a wheelchair during the trial.

But when the time came to reach verdicts in the criminal trial and sanity phase, Newton said jurors based their decisions on the facts of the case--not the defendant’s age.

“It wasn’t a factor,” the Ventura resident said. “If there had been any evidence that this guy was a jerk, he would have gone to prison if he was 105.”

Newton said the testimony of Pohlmeier’s adult children, who described their father as a loving and gentle man, also influenced the decision.

“Here’s this man married to this woman for 62 years. Then all of a sudden he performs the most heinous act possible,” Newton said. The only logical conclusion, she said, was that his brain injuries caused him to “flip out.”

*

That was the argument Olson made during the murder trial.

According to court testimony, Lidwina Pohlmeier had suffered from a number of ailments, including a chronic cough that her husband told authorities was making him “nuts.”

Despite feeding her Popsicles and painkillers, Alfred Pohlmeier was unable to control his wife’s hacking, he told authorities after her death. So on the morning of Sept. 13, 1995, he strangled her.

Olson said Pohlmeier “snapped” in a moment of desperation when his wife’s coughing flared up that day. But prosecutors argued that Pohlmeier committed a coldblooded and deliberate murder--and knew right from wrong when he did it.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn played the taped confession Pohlmeier gave authorities after his wife’s death, in which he admitted strangling her with his bare hands for about 10 minutes.

On the tape, Pohlmeier said he had been thinking about killing his wife for “a couple of days.”

After the jury returned a verdict of second-degree murder--not first-degree as prosecutors had wanted--Glynn suggested that sympathy for Pohlmeier had influenced the jury’s decision.

*

Throughout the unusual case, Glynn urged the jury to remember Lidwina Pohlmeier, who had fought her husband as he took her life.

“It’s a very sad case,” Glynn said, standing in the courthouse hallway Tuesday after the verdict. “This jury obviously considered the law. They did what they had to do.”

Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele set a hearing for April 2 to determine which mental hospital would be best for Pohlmeier.

He could be sent to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, which has a special ward for elderly patients. Or he could be housed in an outpatient facility and supervised, Olson said.

During the short court hearing in which the jury returned its verdict, Pohlmeier turned to Olson and spoke to her in a quiet voice.

Outside the courtroom, she told reporters that he asked her to call his children, who were not present. And he said: “It’s been a long haul.”