Trial Witness Partly Recants ID of Tillman

A witness prosecutors had hoped would place Olympic boxer Henry Tillman at a nightclub on the night of a fatal shooting partially recanted his story Monday after expressing reluctance to testify if reporters were in the courtroom.

Tillman, 39, the 1984 Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medalist, is on trial in Santa Monica for the Jan. 10, 1996, shooting that injured a suspected drug dealer and killed his companion. The shooting occurred at closing time in the parking lot of the Townhouse Nightclub, near Los Angeles International Airport.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Duarte has told jurors that he has had difficulty with reluctant witnesses, some of whom are refusing to testify or are changing their stories because of what he called “the fear factor.”

Sure enough, the second witness at the trial refused to repeat a statement that he made to investigators several months ago placing Tillman at the nightclub.

Standing behind the 39-year-old defendant, Duarte pointedly asked witness Murphy Richardson: “Is this the guy you saw that night in the club?”

Richardson, a 40-year-old real estate agent who had helped stage the club’s weekly comedy nights, replied, haltingly:

“I believe so. I’m not certain. I believe so.”

Later, he backed off from even that statement.

“He may have been there, I am not sure,” Richardson continued. “Maybe it was somebody that looked similar to Mr. Tillman.”

He said he did not recall telling investigators that Tillman “stuck out” in the crowd that night because he is large. The witness added that some of his friends might resemble Tillman.

Duarte asked Richardson if he felt threatened. He denied it. Was he changing his story because he was under oath? He denied that too.

Instead, Richardson said he couldn’t be sure in his identification while “being asked questions . . . that are going to affect this person’s [Tillman’s] life. I would like it to be known that I am not certain.”

Richardson said that he felt it was his duty to testify and was not afraid to do so. But, he conceded, he did not want his name made public.

“You were afraid the media would pick up on this case and plaster your name all over the L.A. Times?” Duarte asked.

“Yes,” Richardson replied.

Duarte had seen it coming. As testimony began Monday, the prosecutor told Superior Court Judge Steven C. Suzukawa that his first three witnesses did not want to testify if their names would be published in news reports. He took the unusual step of asking reporters not to name the witnesses in their reports, and asked the judge to identify them only as John or Jane Doe.

The judge and various media outlets have not agreed to the prosecutor’s requests. It is the policy of The Times to identify adult witnesses who testify at public trials unless they are victims of sexual assaults.

Neither witness who testified Monday could identify Tillman as the gunman who allegedly fired two bursts of bullets into a late-model Lincoln Continental, wounding driver Leon Milton and killing passenger Kevin Anderson. The shooting apparently occurred after an earlier confrontation inside the club, according to prosecutors.

The motive, like most details of the case, remains murky. The accounts of the two witnesses who testified Monday were in conflict on some key details.

Richardson said it was foggy that night. He told the jury that he heard two bursts of gunfire that seemed to come from the same gun. He believed that the shots were fired from a semiautomatic weapon. He testified that they could have come from a .357 magnum revolver.

The first witness, Darin Wheeler, said he was flirting with two women when he turned his head and saw a man walk up to the Lincoln in the parking lot. He could not identify the man, who pointed a small gun into the car, except to describe his hands.

“All I can tell you is, he had some big, manly hands,” he said. Wheeler described the gun as small, like a starter pistol. He heard three to four shots, then two to three shots a few seconds later. The second set of shots, he testified, were louder and deeper.

According to Wheeler’s account, it was clear that night.