Jury Convicts Man in Ex-Girlfriend’s Slaying

A Louisiana man was convicted Wednesday of killing his ex-girlfriend after she refused to abort a child he fathered, citing her Roman Catholic beliefs.

Denna Moody, 39, disappeared in April 1997 after agreeing to meet her ex-boyfriend, Alfred E. Smith, who had traveled from New Orleans to talk about their unborn baby and visit a daughter they had had together years earlier.

Moody’s charred body was found in her burned car near the Van Nuys Amtrak station the next morning, hours after paramedics extinguished the flames.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Yochelson said Smith, 41, probably killed Moody at a park in Sherman Oaks after an argument, then drove the body to a business area near the train station and set the fire.

“She wouldn’t get an abortion. She wouldn’t let him see his present daughter. He brought presents and she threw them out the window,” Yochelson said. “He kills her there, then panics and tries to figure out what to do.”

Smith’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Dror Toister, argued that the circumstantial evidence was not enough for a conviction. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and no one saw the couple together, he said.

“We’re talking speculation, possibilities, likelihood, but we’re not talking proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

The seven-woman, five-man jury deliberated for almost four hours before finding Smith guilty of second-degree murder. He faces a prison term of 15 years to life at a June 11 hearing before Superior Court Judge Sandy Kriegler.

Moody and Smith, who met at Crenshaw High School, had been separated for months when Smith moved to New Orleans in late 1996. Moody visited Louisiana in early 1997, and she became pregnant.

Toister said his client told him he never asked Moody to get an abortion because he knew she would not. She had adamantly refused to do so when she became pregnant with his first child, he said.

But Yochelson said Moody told Smith about the pregnancy during a telephone call three weeks before her death and her oldest daughter overheard Moody say she would not abort the child.

On April 21, 1997, Smith took a train from New Orleans, where he was living with another woman, to Van Nuys to visit his daughter and talk to Moody about the unborn child, Yochelson said.

She agreed to meet him at the Amtrak station three days later, at 7:30 p.m. They drove to Sherman Oaks Park and had a fight, the prosecutor said.

Yochelson said Smith called Moody’s house several times from the park, telling relatives she hadn’t kept their date. Just after midnight, he showed up at her Van Nuys house saying he was worried about Moody, as flames engulfed her and her car blocks away.

He later admitted they’d gone to the park and had a fight, but said she drove off and left him, the prosecutor said.