Ex-Valley Man to Serve 3 Years for Hiding Slaying

Calling it one of the most heinous murder cases he has ever seen, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Edward F. Brodie on Monday handed down the maximum sentence to a 22-year-old man who helped conceal the 1992 slaying of Katrina Montgomery.

Lawrence Nicassio was ordered to serve three years in state prison, despite pleas by both the prosecutor and defense attorney who said he would surely be killed there after agreeing to testify against a fellow skinhead gang member.

Montgomery, a 20-year-old Santa Monica College student, was allegedly raped, stabbed and bludgeoned with a crescent wrench after leaving an Oxnard party on Nov. 28, 1992.

The case languished unsolved for years. But two years ago, county prosecutors launched another investigation, which lead to the arrest of three men. Authorities charged the youngest, Nicassio, with murder. He was just 16 at the time of the crime.

As his case progressed through juvenile court, Nicassio broke from his fellow skinhead gang members and told prosecutors he did not commit the slaying, but had witnessed it and was too afraid to stop it.

He repeated the story to the grand jury in December, pinning the attack solely on Ventura resident Justin Merriman, 30, who was later indicted on 25 criminal counts, including rape and murder in the Montgomery case.

Last month, Merriman was indicted again for trying to dissuade witnesses from testifying against him. The case broadened last week when prosecutors indicted a woman for conspiring with Merriman to prevent witnesses from taking the stand at his trial.

As prosecutors built their case against Merriman, they also dropped the murder charge against Nicassio. He pleaded guilty last month to a reduced charge of being an accessory after the fact.

That charge comes as a result of a sting operation in which prosecutors caught Nicassio on videotape in November 1997 trying to persuade a woman against testifying truthfully before the grand jury about the murder case.

At Nicassio’s sentencing hearing Monday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh told the judge he was initially skeptical of Nicassio’s story of how Montgomery died.

The former San Fernando Valley skinhead told authorities that he saw Merriman stab Montgomery in the neck as she dressed to leave his house. Nicassio and his cousin, Ryan Bush, were spending the night there after leaving the party.

Nicassio told the grand jury that Montgomery begged Merriman not to kill her, but he beat her in the head with the wrench. Nicassio said Merriman then slit her throat and forced Nicassio and Bush to help him dispose of the body.

Nicassio told authorities that they dumped her body at Sunset Farms, a rural area near Sylmar that has since been paved over and developed. Her remains have never been found.

Prosecutors could not charge Nicassio for his involvement in covering up the crime in 1992 because the statute of limitations on an accessory-after-the-fact-charge expires after three years.

“Quite frankly, when he first told us that, we didn’t believe him,” Bamieh said of Nicassio’s story. But the prosecutor said the account was supported by other evidence obtained during an eight-month investigation.

Bamieh said Nicassio led authorities to the spot where he and Bush later buried the body--now beneath an industrial park. Nicassio then agreed to wear a wire to record statements from other people connected to the case.

“He has done everything we’ve asked,” Bamieh told the judge. “He has risked his life. Quite frankly, we have put him in situations where if he were found out, he could have been killed.”

Still, Bamieh asked the judge to impose the maximum three-year sentence to be served in county jail, arguing that for nearly six years the defendant lied to authorities.