Widow of Slain Tourist Testifies

The widow of a German tourist killed near the beach in Santa Monica in 1998 barely held back tears Tuesday as she testified in the trial of three of the four suspects in the shooting.

Astrid Fietze returned to the Los Angeles area from Lobau, Germany, to describe through a court interpreter how the last night of what had been a dream vacation turned to horror as a gunman thrust a pistol against her husband Horst’s chest and fired.

The trial produced more drama Tuesday when one of the other key witnesses from Germany unexpectedly identified one of the suspects in the courtroom.

The Fietzes had saved for years to take the trip to New York and California with longtime friends Gisela and Jurgen Ulber and had been reluctant to return home, Astrid Fietze told the Superior Court. On Oct. 12, 1998, as the group took a last evening stroll two blocks from the beach, a silver Toyota Camry pulled up alongside them. Two men and a woman jumped out and ran toward them.

One of the men “stood in front of my husband. They were arguing. Then he held the pistol against my husband’s chest,” a trembling Fietze told the court. Moments later, the man shot Horst Fietze once at point-blank range and then twice more as Fietze stumbled, she recalled. Then the assailants ran to the car and sped away without even taking a wallet.

Police later found the car, which had been reported stolen, and found fingerprints matching those taken from two of the suspects, Tyrina Lakeisha Griffin, 20, of Los Angeles and Roshana Latiesha Roberts, 21, of Paramount.

They and the alleged gunman, Lamont Dion Santos, 23, of Los Angeles, each face a murder charge. If convicted of first-degree murder, they could be sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. The fourth suspect, Paul Carpenter, 23, remains at large.

The attack on the tourists drew international attention and raised questions about the safety of the Santa Monica beaches, which draw millions of tourists each year. It came during a rise in beach-area gang violence.

Superior Court Judge Lance Ito is hearing the trial in downtown Los Angeles; the defendants waived their rights to a trial by jury.

For more than two years, prosecutors believed none of the victims were able to clearly identify the assailants and instead based their case mainly on forensic evidence and what officials said were confessions by the three defendants.

Last week Ito barred confessions by Griffin and Roberts from being used as evidence and said that the police compelled the women, then minors, to make them. But he upheld the use of Santos’ confession that he killed Fietze. The judge also allowed testimony from Roberts’ father that his daughter drove the getaway car and from a friend who said Griffin bragged about her involvement in the crime.

During a lunch break Tuesday, however, Gisela Ulber surprised prosecutor Anthony Manzella by asking why, during morning testimony, he had not called on her to identify the woman who had grabbed her during the assault.

Back on the stand after lunch, Ulber then identified Griffin as that woman. “I believe I’m certain,” she said through an interpreter.

Griffin’s lawyer, Charles Patton, challenged the sudden revelation. “The circumstances of this ID . . . fly in the face of fairness,” he told Ito, adding that the prosecutors had had two years to go over such possible evidence.

Patton questioned how Ulber could suddenly identify Griffin, who is black, when during her 1998 interviews with police she was unable to recall the suspect’s race. While cross-examining Ulber, Patton repeatedly ran into confusion as to how to translate concepts such as “African American” and “race” into German.

Police previously had raised the possibility that the robbery attempt might have turned fatal because the the assailants and the victims did not understand each others’ languages. But Gisela Ulber on Tuesday said that as the attackers grabbed her, she raised her hands and shouted in English, “Germany! Germany! No dollars!”

After the court session, the three German witnesses held a news conference in the courthouse. The trial is being covered by several German newspapers and media outlets.

Astrid Fietze, who has a 30-year-old son and a 22-year-old daughter in Germany, said she still has nightmares about her husband’s death and finds herself crying without warning.

Both Ulbers said they were also devastated by their friend’s murder and were reluctant to return to the U.S., but they added that the incident had not changed their opinion of America.

“This could have happened anywhere,” Gisela Ulber said.