Lawyers Give Closing Arguments in Slaying

Like many young couples, Amber Merrie Bray and Jeffrey Glen Ayers dreamed of a comfortable suburban existence that included a well-furnished Riverside County home, a flashy sports car and money in the bank.

He would study psychology while she modeled, according to one of the couple’s letters.

Yet, as the two plotted their future, they were also mapping out a sinister path to get there, Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie told a jury in closing arguments of the couple’s murder trial this week. Achieving that plan meant killing Bray’s mother, Warner Bros. record executive Dixie Lee Hollier, he said.

Two juries now will decide the fates of the 20-year-old former honors student and Ayers, 23, who had a penchant for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.

Each has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and murder in the 1996 slaying. They face a maximum of life in prison without parole if a jury finds them guilty of murder with special circumstances, including lying in wait and killing for financial gain.

Prosecutors contend Bray and Ayers planned to kill Hollier and Bray’s younger sister, Amy, to collect a $310,000 inheritance, a fact they contend is documented in several letters and a diagram of Hollier’s home that MacKenzie called a “blueprint for murder.”

“What do you think of this? . . . someone breaks into the house and kills Amy and mom,” read a note that Bray allegedly wrote to Ayers two months before the killing. “Have I snapped? Plotting murder and stuff. . . . After years of abuse, I’ve had it.”

In another note, Ayers outlined several plans for murder, according to MacKenzie.

“I meant what I said on the phone,” he allegedly wrote to Bray. “Your mother and your sister will trouble you no more.”

In her summation Tuesday, Bray’s lawyer, Joy Wilensky, had a different take on the correspondence while acknowledging that Bray complained about her mother. She called Bray’s letter “foolish and silly,” with words that reflected “plans for the future . . . not a plan to commit murder.”

To a second jury, Ayers’ defense lawyer Patricia Mulligan argued that the evidence and testimony did not support a first-degree murder conviction, calling her client’s actions “passion rather than judgment.” Mulligan urged the jury to consider testimony by friends that Ayers believed Bray would kill herself. “He was a young man in love,” said Mulligan, “torn apart by his emotions.”

But MacKenzie, as he had throughout the trial, hammered away with the conspiracy angle.

He said Ayers bought a five-shot, steel-blue revolver the night before the slaying Jan. 16, 1996.

MacKenzie said that Ayers entered the house through an unlocked door, took Hollier’s automated teller card and $18 to make it look like a burglary, and then shot Hollier as she slept.

Hollier was shot twice, but she struggled. Ayers then beat her with his gun and stabbed her 24 times, MacKenzie said.

When 15-year-old Amy Bray tried to come to her mother’s aid by calling police, her older sister disconnected the phone cord, and when Amy tried to put it back in, Ayers ripped it out of the wall, prosecutors said.

Police arrived to find Ayers with Hollier’s blood dripping from his hands, said the prosecution.

“He would get the beautiful woman, the house, the car and the money,” MacKenzie said. “You just had to murder and slaughter an unsuspecting lady who was trying to raise three kids.”