After 20 Years, Woman Recounts Deadly Night

Twenty years ago, a 15-year-old North Hollywood girl woke up in the middle of the night to find her father and younger brother dead, each shot in the head as she slept in the next room.

Police arrested Kenneth Crandell, a house guest who was eventually found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. But Crandell’s conviction was later overturned, and he maintains his innocence.

On Wednesday, the 66-year-old man began a new trial in Superior Court in Van Nuys on charges of murder, kidnapping and assault with intent to rape. The 15-year-old girl, now 34, gave her account of what happened July 6, 1980. Marie Pruett Tyler testified that Crandell confessed to killing Ernest Pruett and 14-year-old Edward Pruett.

“Marie, I have something to tell you. Something really bad has happened,” Tyler recalled Crandell telling her after she got up at 4:30 a.m. for a drink of water. Her father and brother were dead, he told her. Tyler recalled him saying: “I shot them both in the head.”

She testified that he tried to rape her, then kidnapped her and her 7-year-old sister to help him escape. He drove them to Marina del Rey to borrow getaway money, then to a trash bin near Anaheim stadium to throw away a pillow he allegedly used to muffle the gunshots when he shot their father and brother.

She said the red-and-white plaid pillow, which had been made by her mother, had small round holes with burn marks.

She and her sister escaped, Tyler testified, and she called police.

Crandell sat mostly impassive in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sandy R. Kriegler on Wednesday. He won his new trial after a series of successful appeals that have outraged surviving members of the Pruett family.

During opening statements, the prosecutor and Crandell’s defense attorney agreed on some basic facts: Crandell was a family friend invited to share the home of Ernest Pruett, a struggling widower with three children. And Pruett was an alcoholic who got into fights when drunk.

The two sides dispute, however, who was responsible for the two deaths.

Evidence will show that Crandell killed Ernest and Edward Pruett after a drunken fight, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino. The elder Pruett was upset because Crandell was “sloughing off” at work, and he feared Crandell’s behavior would reflect badly on an older son who had helped Crandell get the job. Crandell shot Ernest Pruett, D’Agostino said, then shot the boy.

Crandell’s attorney, Michael V. White, told the jury that Ernest Pruett killed his own son during an alcoholic rage, and Crandell killed the elder Pruett in self-defense.

The passage of 20 years makes the case more difficult for prosecutors.

Witnesses have died. Files and exhibits have been lost or destroyed. Those still living must dig deep into memory to recall events.

Before Crandell kidnapped her, Tyler testified, she hit him over the head with a frying pan. The impact cracked the skillet but didn’t seriously hurt Crandell, she said.

“He said, ‘Now I’ll have to keep an eye on you. If you do anything like that again, I’ll shoot you,’ ” Tyler said.

Defense attorney White, referring to Tyler’s testimony from the early 1980s, pointed out that at that time she never said Crandell had threatened to shoot her.

Crandell represented himself during his first trial, and “did a job which absolutely astounded me,” said Armand Arabian, the presiding judge at the time, according to court documents. Arabian said Crandell had given the prosecutor “a run for his money.”

In 1988, the state Supreme Court reversed Crandell’s death sentence. In 1996, a federal district court found that the deputy public defender who originally represented Crandell was incompetent. That decision was affirmed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded the case for retrial.