Jury Hears Audiotape of Doctor’s Confession

Pasadena jurors in the capital murder trial of pediatrician Kevin Anderson on Monday heard him describe on tape how he strangled a pregnant colleague and then attempted to make her death look like a traffic accident.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marian M.J. Thompson played a taped Sheriff’s Department interview in which the prominent Pasadena doctor described in a calm, businesslike manner how he killed Dr. Deepti Gupta on Nov. 11, 1999, then tried to douse her body with gasoline and push her car off Angeles Crest Highway.

Anderson, 41, of La Verne said the killing occurred while the couple were stargazing and discussing problems of a failed business venture. Gupta threatened to tell his wife she was pregnant with his child and made an implied threat against his 7-year-old daughter, he said.

“I don’t know, something in me just--just snapped,” Anderson was heard on the tape telling two homicide detectives just hours after the killing. “She said she knows where my daughter goes to school.”

Minutes later, he added, “I just grabbed her and I got, I think I was just choking her. I have a tie that I wore, a Snoopy tie, that I wore to work . . . and I grabbed it and I just started pulling it on her.”

Anderson’s defense attorney has conceded during the trial that his client killed Gupta, but says Anderson did so as an impulsive act. Prosecutors say the murder was premeditated and intended to cover up an illicit affair that threatened Anderson’s marriage, career and financial success.

During the taped confession played in court, Anderson told detectives he never checked Gupta’s pulse but assumed she was dead when he pushed her sport utility vehicle off a 450-foot cliff in the Angeles National Forest.

Anderson told detectives he never had sex or a romantic relationship with Gupta. However, a medical examiner has testified in the trial that DNA tests showed that Gupta was pregnant with Anderson’s child when she died.

The trial began Oct. 31 and, after nine days of testimony, the prosecution rested its case Monday with sheriff’s homicide Det. Dan McElderry, who interrogated Anderson. McElderry told jurors that Anderson never once broke down or expressed regret during the interview, at 3:30 a.m. Nov. 12, 1999.

However, McElderry said the entire interview was not taped because the recorder malfunctioned. He said he and a partner took few notes.

Under cross-examination by Michael Abzug, Anderson’s attorney, McElderry acknowledged that an unidentified person had used the pediatrician’s cell phone after taking it from the unsecured vehicle in the lot where it was being held as evidence.

McElderry, for whom Monday was the third day of testimony, said he found matches, a gasoline container, gloves and a three-foot rope in Anderson’s sport utility vehicle. Prosecutors have called the collection a “murder kit.” The gloves were bought two days before Gupta’s death at a Home Depot, McElderry testified.

Thompson, the prosecutor, has sought to portray Anderson as a cold, clinical murderer who allegedly tried to create an alibi the night of the killing by telling nurses at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Pasadena that he would be making rounds. Anderson was a doctor driven by money, not emotion, she said.

In contrast, Anderson’s attorney has said the pediatrician was guilty of a “sudden act of violence--spurred by anger, not calculation.”

If jurors agree with Abzug’s argument, they could convict Anderson of a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, which could result in up to 11 years in prison. Prosecutors are pushing for a conviction for first-degree murder, which potentially carries the death penalty.

During his taped interview, Anderson told detectives that he and Gupta had become friends while working in the same medical group. At Gupta’s suggestion, they discussed establishing a practice together in 1999, but the plan was abandoned after Anderson’s wife objected.

The day before her death, Anderson said Gupta told him she was pregnant and implied that he was the father. “Well, if we don’t do blah, blah, blah, then I might just do something crazy, like go to your house and tell your wife this,” Anderson said on the tape, quoting Gupta.

Anderson then suggested that they talk the next night and that he take her stargazing with his telescope “as something positive to do.”

“But I didn’t trust it,” he said on the tape. “So I kind of thought, well, maybe if I can do something that would kind of scare her a little bit. . . . So I was going to tell her that . . . I could burn her car up--because she really liked her car.”

At mile marker 33, however, the plan went awry and Anderson killed Gupta when he snapped, he said later. Then he panicked, he said. “Maybe I could make it look like it was an accident, like she drove off the cliff or something, which was kind of inane,” Anderson said during the interview.

Investigators say that after putting Gupta’s body back in her car, he pushed it to the edge of the cliff but misjudged the distance and the vehicle started rolling down the hill before he could throw a match.

A passing driver testified earlier that he saw the car plunge and followed Anderson until the doctor got stuck on the mountain road about seven miles away. It was there that sheriff’s deputies arrested Anderson.

Abzug began his defense of Anderson on Monday with testimony from Anderson’s Howard University Medical School classmate, Dr. Kevin Mitchell, a surgeon from Seattle. Mitchell described the pediatrician as a compassionate man who never showed anger, even under stress.

“He is not a person who would resort to violence to achieve anything,” said Mitchell.