Victim Told of Previous Attack, Mother Testifies

A few months before college student Katrina Montgomery disappeared under suspicious circumstances in November 1992, she told her mother that skinhead gang member Justin Merriman had tried to sexually assault her.

“She said ‘No’ and told him to stop,” Kathryn Montgomery told a jury Monday, recalling the conversation she had with her 20-year-old daughter the morning after the alleged assault.

Katrina Montgomery got away that night, according to the prosecution, but was attacked months later by Merriman, who allegedly raped her and slit her throat so she could not report the assault to police.

Merriman, 28, is charged with murder, rape and other counts in connection with Montgomery’s slaying. His trial, which carries a possible death penalty, began last week in Ventura County Superior Court before Judge Vincent O’Neill.

Defense lawyers say there is no hard evidence to prove Merriman killed Montgomery. In opening statements, they suggested that someone else connected to Merriman’s white supremacist gang might be the killer.

Kathryn Montgomery took the stand late Monday morning. Katrina Montgomery was the oldest of her three children--a headstrong, pretty redhead who attended Santa Monica College and worked as a waitress at Jerry’s Famous Deli, near her parents’ home in Los Angeles. The family had previously lived in Ventura.

Kathryn Montgomery told jurors that she had a close relationship with her daughter, recalling how Katrina came to her after the alleged sexual assault attempt at Merriman’s home.

Katrina told her that she had gone to the Ventura condominium where Merriman lived with his mother. As she was getting ready to leave, Beverlee Sue Merriman invited her to spend the night rather than drive back to Los Angeles. Her daughter agreed, Montgomery testified, and went to sleep in a guest bedroom.

“She told me she was awoken by Justin, who had climbed into bed with her--and was making sexual advances,” Montgomery testified. “She said she tried to say ‘No,’ and he wouldn’t listen.”

Katrina Montgomery persuaded Merriman to let her use a bathroom, then grabbed her belongings and ran out of the condominium to her truck parked outside. As she drove away, her mother testified, Merriman came outside after her.

In a voice wavering with emotion, Montgomery told jurors that her daughter was shaken by the incident. They sat in her bedroom and talked about it for a long time.

Months later, there would be no such conversations.

On Nov. 28, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials called Montgomery to report that they had found her daughter’s blue pickup truck abandoned in the Angeles National Forest.

Kathryn Montgomery told jurors that she spent the next several hours calling her daughter’s friends in a desperate attempt to locate her. About 2:30 a.m., she called the Merrimans’ house and demanded to speak with the defendant.

She testified that he told her he had seen Katrina at a party in Oxnard, but wouldn’t elaborate.

Prosecutors contend Katrina Montgomery dropped by that party on her way to visit a friend in Ventura, drank too much and ended up at Merriman’s house where two other skinhead gang members were sleeping on the floor of the defendant’s bedroom.

One of those men, Larry Nicassio, is expected to testify that he saw Merriman rape and murder Montgomery. But defense attorneys have suggested that he may be lying to protect himself from murder charges.

In other testimony Monday, Katrina Montgomery’s former boyfriend, Mitch Sutton, told jurors that he was a member of Merriman’s white power gang in 1989 and introduced Montgomery to the defendant and other skinheads.

Sutton and Montgomery later moved to Germany, where Sutton was stationed in the U.S. Army. They lived together for eight months before their relationship ended.

After she returned to Ventura, Merriman and Montgomery began writing to each other, while Merriman was serving a sentence in a juvenile prison facility in 1990.

Prosecutors admitted as evidence Monday some letters Merriman wrote to Montgomery from prison.

In opening statements last week, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh told jurors that during a two-year period, Merriman’s letters to Montgomery became more sexual--and angry when she indicated she was not interested in having sex with him.

Also Monday, Montgomery’s friend Shawna Torres testified that she went with Montgomery to Merriman’s home sometime in the summer of 1992 to “straighten out some things.” Montgomery had told her friend she was not interested in a sexual relationship with Merriman.

Torres waited in Montgomery’s truck outside Merriman’s house. She said her friend came out after a short while and angrily told her that Justin had tried to choke her while his mother stood by and said nothing.

Testimony in the murder trial is scheduled to resume today.