Widow’s Killer Tells Prosecutor He Isn’t Sorry

Convicted killer Alan Brett Holland wrote that he feels no remorse or guilt about killing an Oxnard widow in 1996, prosecutors said Wednesday as the penalty phase of Holland’s trial began.

In a letter sent to prosecutors over the Christmas holiday, Holland said he had not intended to steal from 65-year-old Mildred Wilson when he confronted her at the Poinsettia Pavilion mall in Ventura. He simply asked her for money, he said, but she berated him for begging and kept on criticizing him.

“I killed the ol’ goat because she didn’t shut up,” Holland wrote in a letter to the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Don Glynn.

“I feel no remorse and I also feel no guilt,” he added.

In the letter, Holland said the widow was lucky to have died so quickly.

Holland was convicted in December of shooting Wilson on July 20, 1996, and stealing her car and her purse. Now both the defense and prosecution will present evidence and testimony to help the jury decide whether Holland should live the rest of his life in prison or face execution.

During the short guilt phase of the trial, Holland’s attorneys presented no defense. But on Wednesday, attorney Willard Wiksell argued that Holland’s life should be spared because he had suffered brain damage as a child that impaired his judgment.

“This is not to excuse what he did,” Wiksell said. “It’s only being offered as mitigation for a sentence other than death.”

For the first time since the trial began Dec. 1, jurors heard from Holland’s mother, who described the convicted killer’s childhood and her refusal to testify for the defense in the case.

When Holland was 11, he suffered severe brain damage because of extreme exposure to pesticides, Wiksell told the jury during his opening statements.

The brain damage in turn impaired Holland’s ability to control his impulses, Wiksell said, and he quickly began getting into trouble. By the time Holland was 14, he had dropped out of school and run away from his home in Florida, Wiksell said. He came to California and lived on the streets, supporting himself through prostitution, Wiksell said.

But Glynn continued to hammer away at Holland, reading portions of the letter that Holland had sent to him.

Holland wrote that he was evil, that he was looking forward to spending his life in prison and that he would not have shot Wilson if she had not criticized him.

During the trial, Holland wrote, Glynn had called him evil.

“I’m legitimately evil now,” he said.

Holland also wrote that he was not always a bad person but that he was a “product of society” molded by drug abuse and homelessness.

After the opening statements, Glynn called Holland’s mother, Sandina Cartier of Dade County, Fla., to the stand. In a rare show of emotion, Holland seemed to lose his composure as his mother told prosecutors that she still loved her son.

Cartier testified that her son had run away from home at 14 and did not return for another 14 years. When he did come back in 1995, she said, he stole her credit cards, burglarized her home and then beat her when she would not turn over the keys to a pickup truck. Holland eventually pleaded guilty to assault charges.

Under cross-examination, Cartier said she would not talk to Holland’s attorney to help save her son from the death penalty because she did not want to be blamed for Holland’s misdeeds.

At one point, the jury heard a tape-recorded telephone conversation between Wiksell and Cartier in which Holland’s attorney was trying to persuade her to help save her son’s life.

During the March 1997 phone call, Wiksell cited the execution of an inmate in Florida in which the electric chair had malfunctioned, causing flames to leap from the man’s head. Cartier started crying at that, but then told Wiksell:

“I’m still a mother but I’m also much on the side of the law.”