Murder Suspect Lied, Jury Told

A Reseda man accused of strangling his girlfriend, fatally shooting his Emmy Award-winning father and trying to kill a housemate lied to police repeatedly in an attempt to cover up his crimes and blame others, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Dale Cutler and Dmitry Gorin told jurors in their closing argument that the evidence against Matthew Marky shows that he went on a 10-hour “rampage of violence” that included two murders and an attempted slaying.

Prosecutors accused Marky of lying during his three days on the witness stand, and giving friends and police false accounts of each incident that do not match the evidence that was presented during the three-week murder trial.

“He kept coming up with new story after new story after new story,” Cutler said. “And he never got it right.”

Prosecutors allege that Marky was enraged with his live-in girlfriend, Maria Ruiz-Smeriglio, when he strangled her about 1 p.m. Aug. 5, 2001. A few weeks earlier, she had kicked Marky while he lay unconscious at her house and he wanted revenge, prosecutors said.

Later that night, the 33-year-old defendant shot his father, William Marky, in the eye as the men drank beers together in his backyard, prosecutors said. They speculated that the elder Marky, who was drunk for the first time after years of sobriety, confronted his son about his role in Ruiz-Smeriglio’s death.

“After 10 years of not drinking, we know that he began drinking that night,” Gorin said. “Is it just the coincidence of Maria’s death or did he put two and two together?”

After the shooting, prosecutors said Marky ran next door to Ruiz-Smeriglio’s house, where he tried to shoot Scott Hinkley, but the gun misfired and Hinkley escaped into a bathroom, where he hid until police arrived.

Marky is charged with two counts of murder, attempted murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Prosecutors also allege the special circumstance of multiple murders. He faces life in prison without parole. He had previously been convicted of making threats against his wife.

But Marky’s defense attorney, James E. Blatt, argued that prosecutors got it all wrong and that his client is not guilty of any of the felony charges.

Blatt accused the only witness to the alleged strangling, Ricky Schaffer, a professional surfer, of killing Ruiz-Smeriglio, 47.

The defense attorney argued that Schaffer was angry over an earlier phone conversation that Ruiz-Smeriglio had with Schaffer’s estranged wife. Blatt said she lied to Schaffer’s wife, telling her that she and Schaffer were taking drugs together and having sex.

Schaffer “had a motive just as powerful as the defendant’s, even more,” Blatt argued.

He said Marky killed his father in self-defense, after the older man fired a shot from his handgun at his son. But prosecutors said there is no evidence that the elder Marky fired the first shot or any shot that night.

The elder Marky, a sound technician, won an Emmy in 1982 for outstanding achievement in film sound mixing for the television series, “Hill Street Blues.”

The defense also disputed Hinkley’s testimony about what he witnessed, saying that he was hallucinating from crack cocaine and that Marky never put a gun to Hinkley’s head and pulled the trigger.

Prosecutors said Marky has changed his story at least three times. At first, he told police that he suspected Hinkley had killed his father; then Marky said his father had committed suicide. Only later did Marky admit to authorities that he was present in the backyard when his father’s handgun was fired.

The jury of six men and six women will begin deliberations today in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John S. Fisher in Van Nuys.