Ex-Husband Implicated in Near-Fatal Beating

After several days in a coma, 48-year-old Linda Lou Morrisset told detectives her former husband was the man who bludgeoned her Sept. 12 and left her near death in her Santa Rosa Valley home, officials said Wednesday.

Lee R. Mannheimer, 56, a Westlake businessman who divorced Morrisset in 1994, has been arrested as the prime suspect in an alleged murder plot.

Authorities said Wednesday that Mannheimer was a prime suspect from the start, and that their suspicions were confirmed when Morrisset awoke from her coma and began talking.

Relatives said child-custody issues were an ongoing source of tension between the two, who share custody of a 9-year-old son.

Morrisset was found unconscious on the floor of her home Sept. 12. She had been severely beaten in the head with a blunt object.

This is not the first time that Mannheimer has been suspected of trying to kill Morrisset. In July 1993, Northern California law enforcement officials looked into the possibility that he had tried to hire two men to kill her after she decided to divorce him.

The case reportedly was dismissed because of jurisdictional disputes.