Trial Opens for Woman in Death of Boyfriend

A few weeks after Peter Paul, a 29-year-old marijuana grower, threatened to kill his girlfriend Christina White, he was found shot to death and buried in the yard of their hillside Topanga Canyon home, according to opening statements Wednesday at her trial.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Renee Meckler told a mostly female jury in Santa Monica Superior Court that White planned to kill Paul, confessed to the slaying to several friends and then lied to police.

But White’s attorney, Alex Kessel, told the jury that White suffered from battered woman’s syndrome and killed Paul in self-defense after suffering severe physical abuse during the six months she lived with Paul.

White, 34, is charged with murder and the illegal cultivation of 600 marijuana plants found in the couple’s Calabasas home.

White was arrested Oct. 22, 1998 at her sister’s Palmdale home on warrants for embezzling more than $50,000 from her Los Angeles-based employer in 1997. She was charged with Paul’s murder and the marijuana cultivation later.

On Oct. 5, 1998, a police officer heard White’s cell phone conversation break through a transmission on his police scanner and recorded White telling an ex-boyfriend that she shot Paul and buried him in the yard, Meckler told the jury.

Kessel said the week before Paul was killed, Paul caught White trying to move out of the house and beat her in the head with a piece of plywood.

White’s landlord, George Menedes, found Paul’s badly decomposed body when he went to collect rent Sept. 30, 1998. He noticed a mound of fresh dirt in the back yard, dug for a few hours until he found a man’s leg and called police.