Merriman Jury Urged: ‘Find Him Guilty’

Over and over again, the bright yellow words flashed against the courtroom wall: “Find Him Guilty.”

The letters, projected by prosecutors during closing arguments, loomed over defendant Justin Merriman on Wednesday like the criminal charges that could spell a death sentence for the 28-year-old skinhead gang member.

But Merriman reclined in his chair during the high-tech presentation of evidence, showing little emotion as prosecutors described him as a cold, calculating killer who murdered 20-year-old college student Katrina Montgomery in 1992 to prevent her from reporting a sexual assault to police.

“This is a classic premeditated murder,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh argued. “He decides she is better dead than a rat.”

During the computerized presentation, Bamieh stood before the jury like a business executive before a board of directors and for six hours Wednesday made his case for first-degree murder.

Defense attorneys are expected to begin their closing argument this morning.

Citing letters and testimony from the monthlong trial, Bamieh said Merriman wanted a sexual relationship with Montgomery and raped her in his bedroom on Nov. 28, 1992, after they attended a party thrown by mutual friends in Oxnard.

Why she drove to the defendant’s home after the party, no one knows, the prosecutor said: The answer died with her.

But two skinhead gang members who spent the night on the floor of the defendant’s bedroom testified they saw her climb into bed with the defendant, and later heard her try to fend off his sexual advances.

Larry Nicassio and Ryan Bush, who are cousins, testified they saw Merriman rape Montgomery and later, as she dressed to leave, stab her in the neck. Merriman then beat her with a wrench, telling the cousins he didn’t want Montgomery to “rat” on him, they said. Nicassio said Merriman then cut her throat.

Nicassio and Bush testified they were forced by Merriman to help dispose of the body. They said they drove Montgomery’s truck, with her body in the back, to Sylmar and placed it in a ravine, then went back a day later to bury the body.

Montgomery’s blood-stained truck was found abandoned in the Angeles National Forest, but her remains have never been found.

During the trial, defense attorneys attacked Bush’s and Nicassio’s credibility, suggesting they may have killed Montgomery and lied to avoid prosecution.

But Bamieh said recorded statements obtained by informants during numerous undercover operations--including several involving Nicassio after he agreed to wear a wire--prove Merriman is the real killer.

“I’m [expletive] trapped,” Merriman tells Nicassio during one of those operations a month before he was indicted on murder charges. “You can’t break now, my mom’s involved in this.”

After replaying the tape-recorded statement Wednesday--the jury heard it earlier in the trial--Bamieh suggested the defendant’s comments corroborate Nicassio’s testimony and show Merriman is scared of getting caught.

“That is what they call an admission,” Bamieh said.

The grand jury indicted Merriman, a parolee and longtime Ventura resident, on murder charges in January 1999 in connection with Montgomery’s death. The panel also indicted him on rape charges for allegedly assaulting two women in 1994 and 1995, and for resisting arrest during a 1998 standoff with police.

Bamieh spent the first hour of his summation Wednesday focusing on the 1998 incident, which he called significant because, he said, it shows Merriman was running from police and afraid he would be tied to Montgomery’s death.

The evidence is uncontested that Merriman ran from police after they attempted to stop him while riding a bicycle with a broken reflector, Bamieh said. Officers identified Merriman and said he pulled a handgun from his waist before barricading himself inside a small house near Ventura Avenue.

Merriman was eventually removed from the house, subdued by six officers and arrested. He is charged with several counts of resisting arrest, assault, felony vandalism and being under the influence of drugs.

Turning to the rape charges, Bamieh described Merriman as a “sexual predator” who preyed on weak women and forced sex through violence and intimidation.

Although Merriman is charged with raping three women, prosecutors also presented evidence of alleged attacks on two others to show a pattern of behavior. In each case, Bamieh argued, Merriman trapped the women in bedrooms or other confined spaces, humiliated them and forced them to have sex for prolonged periods of time, sometimes with gang members nearby.

The details are significant, Bamieh argued, because they corroborate the testimony of each sexual assault victim and speak for the one who couldn’t testify: Montgomery.

“She won’t be able to tell you how degrading it felt to have the defendant turn to Larry and Ryan and offer her up like a piece of property,” Bamieh argued.

Merriman was indicted a second time in May 1999 on conspiracy and witness intimidation charges after allegedly plotting to kill grand jury witnesses. Bamieh focused on those charges near the end of his arguments Wednesday.

From behind bars, Merriman launched an aggressive campaign to silence witnesses and relied on white-power gang members to help him, Bamieh said. Because most of those gang members were in prison, however, Merriman asked women, including his 53-year-old mother, to help him circulate letters that identified informants and key witnesses.

Last week Beverlee Sue Merriman, who served about a year in state prison for conspiring with her son, testified she had never participated in a plot to harm witnesses. She said she pleaded guilty on advice from her lawyers.

Bamieh attacked her credibility during his summation, citing half a dozen alleged lies she told the jury. He called the mother-son relationship “unnatural” and suggested the defendant manipulated his mother to do his bidding.

Closing arguments are scheduled to resume before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. this morning. The jury could get the case for deliberations as early as today.