Mother Held on Suspicion of Conspiracy

The 51-year-old mother of accused killer Justin Merriman has been indicted by the grand jury for allegedly conspiring to intimidate witnesses in her son’s murder case.

Beverlee Sue Merriman, a Ventura bookkeeper, was arrested Tuesday. She has also been indicted on charges of perjury and conspiring to aid a criminal street gang.

Also named in the indictment were Jennifer Wepplo, 23, of Somis and Samantha Medina, 25, of Madera. They are accused of conspiring with Justin Merriman to frighten witnesses who testified before the Ventura County Grand Jury last December.

The hearings resulted in Justin Merriman’s indictment on 25 criminal counts, including the 1992 rape and slaying of Katrina Montgomery. Montgomery, a 20-year-old college student, was beaten to death and her body dumped in a ditch.

Merriman, a 26-year-old Ventura skinhead gang member, has his mother’s name tattooed on the back of his neck. He was also charged with four additional rapes involving two other victims.

Last month, the grand jury handed down a second indictment charging him with three counts of witness intimidation, as well as charges of conspiracy and solicitation to persuade witnesses not to testify against him.

Prosecutors went back to the grand jury after learning that Justin Merriman was allegedly trying to scare off witnesses from Ventura County Jail, where he is being held without bail.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and a trial date is set for January.

Meanwhile, his mother is scheduled to be arraigned today. She is being held on $120,000 bail. The other women, who both pleaded not guilty at earlier arraignments, are each being held on $50,000 bail.

Prosecutors say Beverlee Sue Merriman committed separate acts of conspiracy, starting with an attempt to pressure witnesses into giving false testimony on her son’s behalf between April and September 1998. They allege that she again conspired with her son between January and May of this year to intimidate those witnesses who testified before the grand jury.

During last December’s grand jury proceedings, one witness told the panel he saw Justin Merriman rape Montgomery, then stab her with a knife and bludgeon her to death with a crescent wrench on the floor of his bedroom.

The witness testified that Justin Merriman and a friend wrapped Montgomery in a pink blanket and carried her body out of his mother’s Ventura house on the morning of Nov. 28, 1992. Justin Merriman’s sister told the grand jury she helped her mother scrub blood out of white carpet on the stairs of their Miller Court condominium in late November 1992, according to grand jury transcripts.

She told the panel that her mother said the blood was Justin’s.

Beverlee Sue Merriman recently attended a hearing for her son in Ventura County Superior Court in which prosecutors asked a judge to cut off Justin Merriman’s jail communications on the grounds he was trying to threaten witnesses.

Judge Donald Coleman, noting that Beverlee Sue Merriman often visited her son, restricted Justin Merriman’s phone privileges, but refused to limit jail visits with his mother.