Ventura Man Indicted in ’92 Slaying of Woman

Marking a major development in a 6-year-old case, the Ventura County Grand Jury on Wednesday indicted 26-year-old Justin James Merriman on murder and rape charges in the slaying of college student Katrina Montgomery.

Merriman, a Ventura resident, is the second person charged in the 1992 slaying, which languished for years as an unsolved crime before now emerging as a potential death penalty case.

Two months ago Larry Robert Nicassio, 22, was charged in the death of the 20-year-old woman. A third suspect remains under investigation.

A Ventura High School graduate who was waiting tables and attending Santa Monica College, Montgomery disappeared Nov. 28, 1992, after stopping at an Oxnard party on her way to visit friends in Ventura.

Her blood-stained truck was later found in Angeles National Forest in northern Los Angeles County, but her body was never found.

Police had no luck in the case until a recent series of breaks landed the three suspects in jail, two on unrelated charges. Meanwhile, investigators have continued to search for the woman’s body, and last year searched for evidence at the Oxnard home where the party occurred.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh has been tight-lipped on the investigation. But he issued a statement Wednesday announcing Merriman had been indicted on 25 charges stemming from Montgomery’s slaying as well as a string of unrelated criminal cases.

In addition to the murder charge, Merriman--who was already in custody--is charged with two counts of raping Montgomery. He faces additional allegations of forced oral copulation and that the slaying was committed during a rape.

Paired with a murder conviction, these special circumstance allegations could send Merriman to death row if convicted.

Reached at his home Wednesday night, defense attorney James M. Farley, who represents Merriman in a separate case, declined comment. He will not take the murder case, he said, because of an unspecified conflict of interest.

Merriman, who has a lengthy criminal record for methamphetamine use and resisting arrest, was scheduled to appear with Farley in Ventura County Superior Court next week on charges stemming from a six-hour standoff last year with Ventura police.

In that Jan. 31 incident, Merriman barricaded himself inside a west Ventura home for more than six hours as SWAT team members and nearly 40 law enforcement officers waited outside.

He was apprehended after police lobbed tear gas into the home. He was arrested and charged with brandishing a weapon at police officers, being under the influence of methamphetamine and felony vandalism.

The standoff began after Merriman ran from two sheriff’s deputies who had stopped him near Ramona Street for riding a bicycle after dark without lights, according to police.

Although Merriman had already been scheduled to appear in court Monday on the charges in that case, Bamieh presented evidence of the standoff to the grand jury during a three-week proceeding last month.

In all, Merriman was indicted on charges stemming from the standoff and the Montgomery slaying, as well as seven rape charges involving two other victims in 1994 and 1995.

Merriman is scheduled to be arraigned on all the charges during a court hearing today.

Meanwhile, Nicassio is expected to be arraigned Monday on the murder charge. At a hearing in November, the North Hollywood resident declined to enter a plea and requested a two-month postponement until DNA evidence can be completed.

Since his arrest in late 1997, Nicassio has denied any role in Montgomery’s disappearance. Because he was 16 at the time of the disappearance, Nicassio has fought the charge in Juvenile Court for nearly a year. But a judge eventually ordered Nicassio to stand trial as an adult.

Nicassio is being held without bail at the Ventura County Jail, and Merriman remains in custody in lieu of $250,000 bail stemming from the other felony case.

Times Community News reporter Holly Wolcott contributed to this story.