Widow Tells Court About Hugh O’Connor’s Last Days

Fighting back tears, actor Carroll O’Connor’s daughter-in-law recounted the drug-induced hallucinations and paranoia that plagued her husband during the months before he committed suicide.

Angela O’Connor, bowing her head and sobbing at one point, on Friday described the last time she spoke to her 32-year-old husband, Hugh.

“It was our wedding anniversary and I wanted to tell him I loved him and I wanted to see how he was doing,” she said.

Asked by Carroll O’Connor’s attorney how Hugh was doing, she replied, “He was hallucinating, hearing things, thinking that the conversation was being broadcast throughout the neighborhood.”

Later that day, March 28, 1995, Hugh O’Connor shot himself in the head.

In his grief, Carroll O’Connor publicly vilified the man whom he thought had been selling his son drugs, calling him a “partner in murder.” That man, Harry Perzigian, 41, is now suing O’Connor for slander in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Perzigian has asserted that he did not sell Hugh O’Connor drugs but shared them as a friend and split the costs. Perzigian testified earlier this week that O’Connor wrote thousands of dollars in checks to him for stereo equipment and concert tickets.

But on Friday, Angela O’Connor painted a different picture. She testified that Hugh never bought used stereo equipment from Perzigian and already owned at least $25,000 in top-of-the-line equipment. She also said that Hugh knew ticket agents from whom he routinely bought concert tickets.

Under questioning from Carroll O’Connor’s attorney, Lucy Inman, she verified that Hugh had written several thousand dollars in checks to Perzigian while her husband was on a drug binge between stints at an Oregon rehabilitation center in 1994.

Angela O’Connor described a pattern in which she said Hugh would make a short call to Perzigian, leave their home and return in 30 minutes high on cocaine.

Perzigian’s attorney, Allan Sigel, attempting to discredit testimony damaging to his client, asked the widow why she hadn’t testified at Perzigian’s criminal trial, in which he was convicted of supplying drugs. Sigel asked her if the $15,000 a month she is now receiving from her in-laws for child support “has some bearing on why [she’s] appearing at this trial and not at the previous one.”

“Absolutely not,” she shot back, glaring at Sigel. “And I’m appalled at the question.”

Earlier Friday, the jury heard more testimony from Carroll O’Connor, who admitted that he condemned Perzigian publicly and said he wanted to “harm him in the worst way,” but added that he did not mean to hurt him physically.

Despite having acknowledged that his son got drugs from a variety of sources, O’Connor also admitted that on a “Geraldo Live” TV program in September 1996, he said, “This guy’s a lawbreaker who caused the death of a helpless addict.”

Shortly thereafter, Sigel asked, to sustained objections by O’Connor’s attorney, if he “went after Harry because he was a nobody and because he had a ponytail and wore a Turkish hat.”

Outside the courtroom, O’Connor was asked by a reporter if he was using Perzigian as a vehicle to attack drug pushers in general. “My response is that you have to start somewhere with somebody,” he said. “And he is somebody.”