Defendant Says He Killed in Self-Defense

Murder defendant Kenneth Crandell took the witness stand Wednesday to bolster his assertion that he shot a good friend in self-defense after a heated argument 20 years ago.

Crandell is on trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court for the July 1980 killing of Ernest Pruett, who was 69, and Pruett’s 14-year-old son, Edward. Crandell is also charged with kidnapping Pruett’s two daughters after the killings and assaulting them with intent to rape.

He was found guilty of first-degree murder in 1981 and sentenced to death in 1982, but he won a second trial after a series of successful appeals.

The Van Nuys jury is expected to hear closing arguments today.

Crandell was a family friend who was invited to live with the Pruetts in 1980 while he looked for a job and a permanent place to stay. He says he fatally shot his friend in self-defense after Pruett flew into a drunken rage, shot and killed his teenage son and then turned the gun on Crandell.

“Ernie was a nice guy,” Crandell told jurors in the courtroom of Judge Sandy R. Kriegler. “But his personality changed when he was drinking. It was a nasty change--argumentative, sometimes violent--completely opposite of how he was when he was not drinking.”

Under direct examination by defense attorney Michael V. White, Crandell calmly recounted how he met Pruett in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The men and their wives frequently socialized at each other’s homes in North Hollywood.

The foursome broke up when Pruett’s alcoholic wife died in 1979 and Crandell separated from his wife, Terry. A year later, Crandell moved in with Pruett and three of his children.

In the early evening of July 6, 1980, the two men were drinking shots of vodka with beer chasers, Crandell said. As the evening wore on, Pruett became increasingly argumentative, accusing Crandell of “sloughing off” at work. Pruett claimed such behavior would reflect poorly on his eldest son, Vern, who had helped Crandell land the job.

As the two men argued in the living room, Edward was stretched out in a sleeping bag while his sisters, Marie and Kathy, slept in an adjacent bedroom.

At one point, Edward told his father to “lay off” Crandell about his job performance, Crandell said.

“As I was watching TV, Ernie got up from the white couch and went to where Eddie was lying down,” Crandell said. “He said, ‘Shut up, idiot.’ He was over Eddie. He had a gun in two hands. I heard ‘Boom.’ He backed up a few steps and turned toward me.”

Fearing for his life, he shoved a pillow in Pruett’s face with one hand and grabbed for the gun with the other, Crandell said, then pulled the trigger and the gun discharged.

Crandell said he choked Pruett to make sure he couldn’t reach for the gun that had fallen to the floor.

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After the shootings, Crandell said, he dragged both bodies from the living room to a screened porch and began to clean blood from the carpet, sofa cushions and a throw pillow.

Crandell testified that he cleaned up because “I didn’t want Kathy and Marie to see the terrible thing that had happened.”

During cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino challenged Crandell’s assertions that he acted in self-defense. She argued that Crandell was angry because Pruett had told him to get out of the house and that in a fit of rage he fatally shot his friend in the head and then turned the gun on Edward when the boy screamed.

D’Agostino suggested that Crandell, who was 46 at the time, easily overpowered the shorter, weaker and older Pruett.

Crandell cleaned up the living room not to protect the girls from seeing their father’s and brother’s bullet-riddled bodies, but to cover up a crime scene, D’Agostino said.

She also argued that Crandell didn’t go to the police immediately because he feared he would be blamed for the shootings.