Killer Asks and Answers Questions at Penalty Trial

A convicted triple murderer giggled, consulted a dictionary and referred to himself as a killer as he attempted Friday to persuade jurors that he should not die for his crimes.

And those were not the most unusual events of the day in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Van Nuys.

Sitting in the witness box, Robert M. Bloom Jr. would read a question to himself. He would then answer.

Bloom was questioning himself because he was acting as his own lawyer, after firing his two defense attorneys Tuesday. They had been pursuing an insanity defense.

Bloom told jurors he wanted to kill his father but not his stepmother or stepsister in 1982 at their Sun Valley home.

“To a certain extent, I am sorry” for the deaths of the woman and child, he testified, “but this is not my fault.”

He called his crimes a “necessary evil” to prevent his stepmother and stepsister from identifying him as the killer.

Bloom said he had not expected the woman and 8-year-old girl to be home when he killed his father.

He said that after he fired two shots into his stepmother’s head, he fired a third shot as she was lying on the floor, to make sure she was dead.

He told jurors he stabbed his stepsister with a pair of scissors and then shot her in the face.

“She was too tenacious . . . She was refusing to die,” he said.

Bloom said he felt no remorse for killing his father.

“The only remorse I have is that I didn’t do it at 16 or 17,” he said. “He got what he deserved.”

Bloom was convicted of killing his father when Bloom was 18 years old. He was sentenced to die, but a new trial was ordered by appellate judges who ruled his lawyer had failed to provide an adequate insanity defense.

Bloom faces a potential death penalty because he committed multiple murder.

Bloom and Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie Samuels exchanged barbs several times, with Samuels calling Bloom a murderer and Bloom referring to himself as a killer.

Superior Court Judge Darlene Schempp admonished Bloom on several occasions to answer questions directly.

Samuels began her cross-examination by asking Bloom whether he was trying to get the death penalty.

“No, you’re trying to get it,” he said. “I’m just trying to tell the truth.”