Start of Trial in Cosby Killing Set for Feb. 17

A trial date of Feb. 17 was set Tuesday for the accused killer of Ennis Cosby as new details emerged on the prosecution’s efforts to link 18-year-old Mikail “Michael” Markhasev to the highly publicized slaying.

As the tall, wiry murder suspect sat quietly in a Santa Monica courtroom, his attorneys won an order from Superior Court Judge David Perez to obtain more information compiled by authorities, including telephone records from the business enterprises of entertainer Bill Cosby in the months before his son was shot to death last winter.

Although Perez initially questioned the relevance of those phone records, he agreed to have them released after Deputy Alternate Public Defender Henry Hall said they were important enough to authorities for them to have obtained a search warrant.

“If they were irrelevant, my suspicion is that the prosecution would not have [requested] the search warrants in the first place,” the lawyer said.

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Likewise, Hall asked the district attorney’s office to turn over more information about a jailhouse informant whom authorities interviewed, arguing that the informant’s last statement to police raises questions about his credibility.

“ ‘If there isn’t enough, I know something about other cases that I can help you with too,’ ” Hall quoted the informant as telling authorities during an interview about the Cosby killing.

But Hall’s request became moot when prosecutor Anne Ingalls assured the court that neither that informant nor another referred to in other court papers would be called as witnesses in the case.

The prosecution did ask that the court be prepared to hear from several other witnesses, two of whom were the temporary subjects of bench warrants Tuesday when they failed to appear for the proceedings.

The judge later withdrew the warrants when Sarah Peters and Eli Zakaria arrived in the courtroom. The two youths are listed as prosecution witnesses and have reportedly told authorities that they were in a car with Markhasev moments before the shooting.

A bench warrant remains in place for a third prosecution witness, Gabe Drapel, whose role in the case has not been disclosed by authorities.

The body of Ennis Cosby, 27, was found early Jan. 16 next to his Mercedes-Benz, which was parked with a flat tire in Sepulveda Pass near the San Diego Freeway. Cosby was killed by a single bullet to the head in what police had described as a bungled robbery.

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Authorities recovered the purported murder weapon, a .38-caliber revolver, long after the slaying, though forensic tests did not reveal any identifiable fingerprints, according to a Los Angeles Police Department report.

More recent DNA tests have also failed to link Markhasev to the crime scene, according to reports presented to lawyers.

At the request of prosecutor Ingalls, Judge Perez granted a request Tuesday for a handwriting sample from Markhasev, who remains in custody with no bail. During his months in incarceration, Markhasev has been reported to have linked himself to the Cosby killing in letters to another inmate.

Perez scheduled another hearing for Dec. 9 to resolve any other pretrial conflicts over evidence.