Witness Tells Jurors He Saw Woman Slain

Justin Merriman plunged a knife into college student Katrina Montgomery’s neck, and as she curled into a ball on the floor--begging for her life--he beat her with a wrench and slit her throat.

That was the testimony of former skinhead Larry Nicassio, who told the jury that while spending the night at Merriman’s home in November 1992 he watched the defendant kill Montgomery after a sexual assault.

Through tears, Nicassio stared at the floor of a silent courtroom and admitted he was ashamed he did nothing to stop the attack.

“Did you help her?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh asked.

“No,” Nicassio replied.

“Why not?” Bamieh snapped.

“Because I was afraid,” Nicassio said.

As he spoke, Montgomery’s mother burst into tears, sobbing from the front row of a dark and crowded courtroom, where the lights were dimmed for the fourth time this week because of the state’s continuing energy crisis.

Nicassio’s anticipated testimony drew more than 50 people to Friday’s court proceedings. It was his statement to prosecutors three years ago that broke open a long-stalled criminal investigation, ultimately landing Merriman, 28, in jail on murder, rape and related charges. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

When Merriman’s trial began two weeks ago, defense attorney Willard Wiksell told jurors the entire case comes down to whether they believe Nicassio.

Wiksell further suggested in his opening statement that the 24-year-old former North Hollywood resident duped prosecutors into a sweetheart deal to avoid murder charges and could be the actual killer.

Cross-examination is set to begin Monday.

Prosecutors called Nicassio to the stand Friday morning and kept him there most of the day answering questions about the party that preceded Montgomery’s disappearance, her death and the role he played years later as an informant.

In November 1992, Nicassio, nicknamed “Lil’ Larry,” was 16 and the youngest member of a San Fernando Valley skinhead gang, whose members lived in a flophouse in Sylmar and often partied with a skinhead gang in Ventura.

Nicassio told jurors he idolized the older white supremacists, men like gang leaders Scott Porcho and Justin Merriman. Men who had been to prison.

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One Friday night, Nicassio, his cousin Ryan Bush and a few other skinheads from the Valley drove to Oxnard for a party at Porcho’s house, Nicassio testified.

He said Montgomery, a 20-year-old Santa Monica College student who once lived in Ventura, was there. So was Merriman. And Nicassio said the chemistry between them was strained.

According to previous court testimony, Merriman was attracted to Montgomery but she had made it clear she wasn’t interested in him.

During the party, Nicassio said, Merriman asked him to assault Montgomery and repeatedly handed him a steak knife. Nicassio said he thought it was a joke.

Late in the night, he said, Merriman and Porcho got into a fight over Montgomery that ended when Porcho broke a beer bottle on his friend’s head. In previous testimony, Porcho said the fight began when Nicassio put a knife to Montgomery’s throat--but Nicassio denied Friday such an incident had occurred.

At about 5 a.m. Porcho’s wife gave Merriman, Nicassio and Bush a ride to the Ventura condominium where Merriman lived with his mother and sister. Merriman telephoned Montgomery, and as Bush and Nicassio settled into sleeping bags on the floor of the defendant’s bedroom, she showed up with an overnight bag.

Nicassio said she changed clothes and climbed into bed with Merriman. Then, he said, he began to hear noises and looked up to see the defendant straddling Montgomery and demanding sex.

“She was saying, ‘No, Justin,’ ” Nicassio testified. “He smacked her in the face. I heard him say, ‘Do it now’. . . . He got on top of her and started having sex with her.”

Montgomery pleaded for him to stop and at one point told the defendant she was afraid of getting pregnant, Nicassio said. “When he was done, he got off of her and said, ‘There. Now you’re pregnant,’ ” the witness testified.

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Nicassio said he only spoke up once--to ask Merriman to let Montgomery use the bathroom.

It was while she was getting dressed after that request, Nicassio testified, that Merriman stabbed her.

“She was kneeling down, putting her shoes on, and he came up alongside of her, swinging a knife,” Nicassio testified through tears. “She, uh, grabbed her throat and yelled out and fell over on her side and curled up into a ball.”

She was crying out, begging Merriman not to hurt her, Nicassio continued, but the defendant threw a blanket over her, grabbed a wrench from his dresser drawer and hit her on the head. Nicassio said he told Merriman to let her go.

But he said the defendant replied, “No, she’ll rat on me.”

Nicassio said he turned away and looked out the window. When he turned back moments later, he said, he saw Merriman holding a knife to Montgomery’s throat.

When it was over, Nicassio said, Merriman wrapped Montgomery in a pink blanket and sleeping bags from the floor. “He was saying, ‘We have to make a plan to cover this up,’ ” Nicassio said.

At Merriman’s direction, he drove Montgomery’s blue pickup truck with her body in the back to Sylmar, where Bush and Merriman placed it in a large drainpipe off a dirt road, Nicassio said.

After wiping away their fingerprints with paint thinner, he said, they drove the truck off a winding mountain road in the Angeles National Forest and threw the murder weapons in an industrial park dumpster.

Two days later, Nicassio said, he and Bush went back and buried Montgomery. And with the exception of one conversation with his girlfriend, Nicassio said, he never spoke of what happened that night.

In late 1997, Nicassio was arrested on suspicion of Montgomery’s slaying after Ventura County prosecutors took over the case. In March 1998, Nicassio cut a deal and agreed to lead them to the body.

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But the rural area where Nicassio said they buried the woman was paved over, and her remains could not be found.

At that point Nicassio agreed to participate in a series of sting operations designed to elicit statements from Merriman, who by the spring of 1998 was in Ventura County Jail on an unrelated offense.

On about half a dozen occasions, Nicassio wore a concealed recording device behind bars and talked to the defendant about Montgomery’s slaying, he testified.

At the end of testimony Friday, prosecutors played one of those recordings, in which Merriman is heard telling Nicassio to keep quiet.

Testimony before Judge Vincent O’Neill is scheduled to resume Monday.