Police Lied, Casino Slaying Suspect Says

The Long Beach teenager accused of sexually assaulting and killing a 7-year-old girl in a Nevada casino bathroom last May testified Thursday that police repeatedly lied in their accounts of his confession and ignored his pleas for an attorney.

Appearing calm and poised on the witness stand, Jeremy Joseph Strohmeyer, 19, made the statements in his first public testimony since the death of Sherrice Iverson, whose body was found crumpled in a bathroom stall of the Primadonna Resort near the California-Nevada line. Thursday’s court session was part of an ongoing hearing to determine whether Strohmeyer’s confessions to police should be allowed into evidence at his upcoming capital murder trial.

In an apparent suicide attempt, Strohmeyer had swallowed 37 time-release capsules of an amphetamine, Dexedrine, at the time of his arrest last May. Alone in a car with a Long Beach police officer en route to a Long Beach hospital, Strohmeyer said, he requested an attorney--a right he knew he was entitled to from watching television.

“I said, ‘I want a lawyer, I believed it to be my right,’ ” Strohmeyer testified under examination by his attorney, Leslie Abramson. “I’d watched police TV shows before. In all the TV shows, they always read them their rights. If they want a lawyer, they get them a lawyer.”

Strohmeyer said that the officer, Long Beach Sgt. Walt Turley, responded that an attorney would “drag things out, make it difficult on me and my family.”

Police have testified at the pretrial hearing that Strohmeyer never requested an attorney. Authorities have also contended that Strohmeyer spoke readily and appeared eager to make statements about the killing.

Strohmeyer is charged with murdering and sexually assaulting the Los Angeles youngster in the Primm, Nev., casino last May 25. Authorities say the killing occurred after the girl’s father left her and her 14-year-old brother in a video arcade at the casino while he gambled shortly before dawn.

The Long Beach high school senior, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to stand trial in April and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Strohmeyer was arrested three days after the crime as he ran from his house. In the hours after his arrest, he spoke to police three times, detailing the killing. Strohmeyer’s attorneys claim that the confessions were illegally obtained by unscrupulous police who denied Strohmeyer access to a lawyer, violated the teenager’s constitutional rights and forced him to speak while he was recovering from the apparent suicide attempt. Strohmeyer, weakened by ingesting the massive dose of amphetamine, was virtually coached and rehearsed on the confessions that he eventually made to police, Abramson said.

At hearing’s end, District Judge Don Chairez will rule on whether any impropriety occurred that would cause the confessions to be kept from a jury.

Dressed in navy blue jail garb, Strohmeyer gave his account of his treatment at the hands of police--a version that followed six days of testimony from hospital personnel, Long Beach and Las Vegas police and a drug expert.

When asked by Dist. Atty. Stuart Bell if a Long Beach officer had fabricated his account of giving Strohmeyer his Miranda rights, Strohmeyer furrowed his brow and said, “Yes.”

But Strohmeyer also said that he had told another Long Beach officer that Turley had read him his Miranda rights. He said Thursday that he had made the statement because he hadn’t wanted to get Turley into trouble. Turley, he said, had treated him in a paternal fashion.

“It seemed like he was my friend,” said Strohmeyer. “He was trying to help me.”

Strohmeyer maintained that at the time he made his statements, he was under the influence of the amphetamines and that he felt high--a sensation that included numbness in his left leg, left side, and stomach.

Under cross-examination, Strohmeyer conceded that he had not told any of the hospital personnel about the numbness or his allegation that Long Beach officers had not honored his request for an attorney.

During their testimony, hospital workers and police have said that Strohmeyer appeared cogent and cooperative.

In an affidavit filed in a Nevada court last year seeking an arrest warrant against Strohmeyer, a Las Vegas homicide detective stated that the high school senior “confessed to the crimes of murder, sexual assault and kidnapping of Sherrice Iverson” during an interrogation.

Strohmeyer said he was playing hide-and-seek with the youngster in the Primadonna’s video arcade when they began hurling spitballs at each other, according to the affidavit. The girl then threw a “Caution--Wet Floor” sign at Strohmeyer, and he “admitted this angered him,” the affidavit stated.

Strohmeyer next followed the girl into the women’s restroom, according to the affidavit, grabbing her and forcing her into a stall.

He sat on the girl, the affidavit said, when he heard three women enter the restroom, and after they left, he noticed the girl’s breathing had become “labored.”

“He figured she was brain-dead and didn’t want her to suffer so he put one hand behind her head and one hand under her chin and snapped her head like he had seen on TV,” the affidavit continued. Hearing her still breathing, according to the affidavit, he snapped her neck harder “and at [that] point she stopped breathing.”

Meanwhile Thursday, a judge in Santa Ana ruled that Strohmeyer’s emotional problems cannot be raised in a sex discrimination suit filed by Strohmeyer’s mother against her former employer, Western Digital Corp.

Winifred Strohmeyer, 54, the former director of compensation at the Irvine-based maker of computer disk drives, alleges that the firm rejected her for promotions in favor of younger, less qualified men.