Markhasev Is Found Guilty of Cosby Murder

Mikail Markhasev, a former honor student turned gang member, was found guilty Tuesday of murdering the son of entertainer Bill Cosby, bringing an unexpectedly quick finish to a trial that has captured nationwide attention.

A racially mixed jury of six men and six women deliberated less than six hours before reaching unanimous verdicts on a two-count indictment accusing Markhasev of killing Ennis Cosby, a 27-year-old doctoral student, in the early morning of Jan. 16, 1997.

“It was open and shut for most of us,” said one juror, a retired Los Angeles electronics worker who asked not to be identified.

The verdicts brought tears and hugs among Cosby’s daughters Erika and Erinn and about a dozen other relatives and friends. One of them was Phil Caputo, the younger Cosby’s best friend, who had broken down in tears during brief testimony about how he spent the afternoon with Cosby before he was killed.

Bill Cosby did not appear in court Tuesday. He had confined his attendance at the three-week trial to one brief appearance for closing arguments Monday morning.

As the clerk read the verdicts, Markhasev stood facing the jury with his two lawyers, showing no signs of emotion or any change in expression. At one point, he turned and looked at the Cosby family as they celebrated the verdicts.

His mother and two relatives, who usually sat directly behind him, did not arrive until moments after the verdicts were read.

Asked how Markhasev felt after the verdicts, Deputy Public Defender Henry J. Hall said:

“He was just convicted of murder, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Hall said. “He’s 19 years old, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how he feels about it.”

Hall said he still thinks the prosecution did not prove its case: “There is still a reasonable doubt in my mind that he was the person who was up there and pulled the trigger.”

News coverage “created a expectation of conviction,” Hall said, adding that Markhasev will appeal the verdicts.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Anne Ingalls rejected any notion that the media were responsible for the outcome of the trial.

“The jury was extremely responsible in what they did, and I think the court handled the media very responsibly,” she said. “I think the evidence convicted Mr. Markhasev. I think Mr. Markhasev convicted Mr. Markhasev. And not the media.”

Her boss, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, said, “Justice was done in this case.

“This is not a time for broad smiles. We’ve lost a life . . . [but] we are pleased for the Cosby family and really for the people of Los Angeles.”

Shortly after the verdicts, Cosby family spokesman David Brokaw said the family would not comment on the proceedings.

“The Cosby family is satisfied that the judicial process has led to a conviction,” he said.

Brokaw said the family praised Ingalls’ performance.

“[She] did a superlative job for the prosecution for the people,” he said.

Markhasev’s family declined to comment and left the courthouse wearing scarves over their heads while being pursued by television camera drews.

Just before 6 p.m., Markhasev was led from the courthouse clad in his blue jail jumpsuit, his hands manacled behind his back, and whisked into a waiting Sheriff’s Department bus.

Just as he emerged, a blond woman in her early 20s called out to him in Russian, making him flash a broad smile.

“I wished him good luck in Russian,” she said later. “I told him I loved him.”

The woman, who would not give her name, said she met Markhasev about six months ago at an unidentified named school they attended. “He used to smoke marijuana in my classroom,” she said. “He was really crazy. He’d do crazy things. But he was also very intelligent.”

The jurors left the building after meeting with attorneys, but declined to discuss their decision publicly.

But one juror, reached later at his home, talked about the deliberations.

From the outset, all the jurors except one agreed that Markhasev was guilty, he said. Their vote was 11 to 1 on the murder charge, and they were unanimous on the robbery charge at the start of deliberations.

“The robbery was no problem; the murder was the problem [for one female juror.] The whole problem for her was, did we have the right guy. . . .

“Was it Zakaria [Eli Sakaria, a Markhasev associate the defense attorneys accused of the murder]? We wanted it to be crystal clear. You don’t convict a guy for life without parole without some kind of qualms about it,” the juror said.

He said Bill Cosby’s involvement had no effect on him whatsoever.

“Yeah, I saw Bill Cosby or maybe it was his double,” he said, downplaying the celebrity’s influence.

It was the letters that convicted Markhasev, he said, referring to a series of jailhouse notes in which Markhasev virtually admitted to the killing.

“The letters--he fixed himself with the letters,” the juror said.

Intrigue and Street Toughs

From the outset, the case has been a classic whodunit. Although lacking the flash and emotion of some celebrity-tinged cases, it has been filled with intriguing testimony and a colorful cast of characters who introduced jurors to a seamy side of the world where talk of drugs and “taking care of rats” is common.

Jurors saw the mysterious, silent appearances of young street toughs such as Zakaria and Michael Chang. Chang sat in the witness chair for a few moments, but refused to testify and was held in contempt.

Zakaria was paraded in front of the jury, a silent testament to the argument that he doesn’t look anything like the early descriptions of the killer. But he said nothing, in keeping with his 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Chang, another key prosecution witness who helped Markhasev look for a gun that turned out to be the murder weapon, also refused to testify, apparently out of fear of retaliation. He was held in contempt of court.

“I was just dying for him to testify,” Hall said, suggesting that he could have used him to trip up another key prosecution witness.

When Chang, Zakaria and his girlfriend, Sara Ann Peters, refused to testify, he lost “a good two-thirds” of the evidence he planned to present, Hall said.

At one point in the trial, the jurors sat spellbound while listening to an obscenity-laced telephone conversation between a panicked, suspicious Markhasev and a friend who was secretly working for the police to obtain an incriminating statement.

The trial was tightly regulated. For the past year, Superior Court Judge David D. Perez has severely restricted coverage of the case, forbidding lawyers to speak to reporters, barring television cameras, sealing important court documents that are usually open and holding secret hearings with the lawyers.

The prosecution’s case hung on the credibility of key testimony from witnesses with shady pasts, and on the jailhouse letters in which Markhasev virtually admitted his guilt.

As for the defense, deputy alternate public defenders Hall and Harriet Hawkins tried to persuade the jury that Zakaria killed Cosby. They said the prosecution’s witnesses could not be trusted because they were trying to curry favor with the prosecution on pending criminal charges or were trying to sell their stories to the tabloids.

Hall conceded at his news conference that the jailhouse letters were key to the prosecution, but he declined to comment on why he did not call a handwriting expert to challenge their authenticity.

The Night of the Killing

The story of Cosby’s death began when the doctoral student from Columbia University Teachers College headed up the San Diego Freeway to visit Stephanie Crane, a friend in Sherman Oaks. Just 10 minutes from her house, his Mercedes-Benz convertible blew a tire and he pulled off the freeway at Skirball Center Drive to change it. He called Crane to come help him.

Meanwhile, Markhasev and two companions, Zakaria, 24, and Peters, 22, both of Orange County, had stopped about 450 feet away to use the phone at a park-and-ride lot to call a drug connection, the prosecution said. When they could not reach the connection, Markhasev went off to rob Cosby.

Cosby, meanwhile, was changing the tire while Crane sat in her Jaguar, with the motor and heater running, watching him work in the glow of her headlights. Suddenly, the killer, wearing a light-colored knit cap, appeared in her window.

“Get out of the car or I will kill you,” he told her, Crane testified. Frightened, Crane threw the car in gear and sped off, but stopped 50 feet away and turned around to help Cosby. But she was too late. She saw the killer run away, jump into a parked car and speed off. Cosby was lying in the road, blood pouring out of a bullet wound in his head. The $800 in his pocket and car and the expensive Rolex watch on his wrist were not touched.

The prosecution said Markhasev, Zakaria and Peters drove to a wooded area near the intersection of Coldwater Canyon Road and Valleyheart Drive in the San Fernando Valley and ditched the murder weapon, a .38-caliber pistol.

Ingalls on Tuesday declined to say whether she would file charges against Markhasev’s companions.

Two days after the threesome disposed of the weapons, Markhasev called Chang, a former Juvenile Hall bunkmate, to help him find a gun. Chang, not having a car, enlisted the help of Christopher So.

So said that after a brief search in the wooded area, they gave up. He said he heard Markhasev tell Chang: “I shot the n-----. It’s all over the news.” He said Markhasev was frantic, saying that he had to return to search some more and that he had to lie low.

So called the National Enquirer to earn a $100,000 reward, and the tabloid notified police, who tracked So down and persuaded him to lead them to the wooded area. Police found the gun, wrapped in a knit hat that contained hair fibers that later were matched to Markhasev’s hair.

After Markhasev was arrested in March, he struck up a correspondence with another inmate.

In one letter about the attempted robbery of Cosby and signed with his gang moniker, “PWee,” Markhasev allegedly said that Zakaria knew about the crime, but that “there was no partner. I went to rob a connection, but obviously found something else.”

In another, “PWee” wrote: “There’s a vato [person] in Bel-Air that sells coke. I was supposed to take him out. . . . The vato wasn’t there so you know the rest. . . . They got lots on me, a cuete [gun], beanie, other witnesses, a ruca [woman, apparently Crane] at the scene. The Chino [Chang] led them to the evidence.”

Those letters were key to the prosecution. Hawkins and Hall desperately tried to shake the testimony of a handwriting expert who matched them to Markhasev’s writing. But they failed.

In her closing arguments, Ingalls said everything depended on the letters.

She apparently was right.

Perez scheduled a sentencing hearing for Aug. 11.

Times staff writers James Rainey, Anne O’Neill, Carla Hall, John Glionna, Alan Abrahamson, Abigail Goldman and Hector Tobar contributed to this story.

* COSBY CASE REACTION: Legal experts praised prosecutors’ handling of the murder trial. A16