Trial Opens for Man Accused of Threatening Garcetti

Sharing two menacing letters with jurors, authorities opened the trial Tuesday of a 57-year-old Hollywood man charged with threatening Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti when bureaucratic delays allowed the man’s life savings to be frozen long after a child support dispute had been settled.

Handyman Roberto Lansing is accused on two felony counts of threatening Garcetti in letters that were purportedly triggered by the D.A.’s handling of the child support case between Lansing and his ex-wife, who is scheduled to testify on his behalf.

Specifically, authorities allege, Lansing threatened Garcetti after the defendant’s $10,000 bank account was seized by the state Franchise Tax Board in March, four months after Lansing and his ex-wife repeatedly notified the prosecutor’s embattled child support and collection division that the dispute had been settled.

“No one even attempted to look into this,” Deputy Public Defender Carol Whyte told a Los Angeles jury, “until after Mr. Lansing was arrested.”

But in his opening statement before Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger, Deputy Atty. Gen. Bob Snider said that although the mistake may explain Lansing’s anger, “it does not excuse the threat” made against Garcetti.

Lansing, a native of Brazil who moved to the U.S. 33 years ago, was arrested in May and charged with threatening a public official and terrorist threats. If convicted on both counts, he faces up to three years in prison.

Snider, whose office was assigned the case because of a conflict of interest for the district attorney’s prosecutors, said the dispute between Lansing and his ex-wife began long after their 1984 divorce.

In 1993, Snider said, Lansing’s former wife contacted authorities because he had become delinquent in $200-a-month support payments for their only daughter, then 16 years old.

Early this year, Snider said, Lansing sent letters to Garcetti’s office and to state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren that clearly threatened the life of Garcetti and, in one case, Garcetti’s family and staff.

In his first letter, according to testimony Tuesday, Lansing told Lungren that the district attorney’s failure to intervene had caused “extreme hardship” to Lansing’s family. That April 27 letter not only demanded a state investigation but ended with Lansing warning it was his “legal right” to take matters into his own hands through “assassination or murder.”

A May 3 letter to Garcetti’s office also included a threat, according to testimony by district attorney’s investigator Ken Godinez, who at the time was assigned to Garcetti’s security detail.

“This is to inform you that I have decided to take a trip--one way--to the morgue,” the letter to Garcetti said, adding: “You, your wife, your daughter [and other top staff] . . . will come along.”

In her cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses, Lansing’s attorney pointed out that the district attorney’s office had been aware that the defendant’s dispute with his ex-wife had been settled but failed to intervene when his assets were seized.

Whyte also questioned the seriousness of the threat by asking why Garcetti was not notified of the letter until hours after Lansing was arrested at his Hollywood home.

“I don’t think he issued a death threat,” Whyte said. “He was angry. He was . . . frustrated.”

It was unclear whether Lansing, who has remained in custody since his arrest, will take the stand in his defense. It is also unclear whether Garcetti will be a witness in the trial, which is expected to last several days.