Jury Must Decide if Lies Point to Murder

I’d pay good money to be in the room when jurors begin deliberating the fate of murder suspect Hugh “Randy” McDonald, who wrapped up testimony in his own defense Thursday.

Because it’s a murder trial, it is by definition about the passions and motives that drive someone to the edge and beyond. And the McDonald jurors will have to decide a tantalizing question: Did McDonald flee Orange County in 1997 because he had just shot and killed a Villa Park woman in her home or, as he says, because he wanted out of a loveless marriage and failed life?

McDonald, 53, spent parts of three days on the witness stand this week, virtually unwavering in tone or action while trying to convince jurors that his departure and faked suicide had nothing to do with Janie Pang’s murder. What drove him out of his life in Corona del Mar, he testified, was a personal and business life that had unraveled. When he headed for the Golden Gate Bridge, he planned to end it all--until he changed his mind and decided to embark on a new identity instead.

McDonald said repeatedly that he dropped out of the life he had known to escape the emptiness and pain. In the kind of irony that murder trials produce, deputy Dist. Atty. Walt Schwarm forced McDonald to relive almost every element of that life.

Schwarm was as biting and skeptical as the law allows while grilling McDonald, but hasn’t been able to put him at the home of Janie Pang--the wife of a client of McDonald’s former law firm. Nor are officials even sure if McDonald and Pang ever met before she died.

Minus any physical evidence or known motive linking McDonald to Pang’s death, Schwarm set out to make McDonald look as unlikable as possible. And with McDonald’s help--he copped to all kinds of unseemly and criminal behavior--Schwarm no doubt made inroads.

Among other things, McDonald conceded that he engaged in money laundering before he left Orange County, and theft and forgery after he left.

“You’ve got the ability to look someone in the eye ... size them up, lie and then get what you want?” Schwarm asked.

McDonald said he wouldn’t put it quite that way but acknowledged on various occasions that he had lied and deceived people after he left California in an effort to keep his secret life intact.

McDonald insisted that his 26-year marriage had grown “loveless” and that debts and fear that his shady business practices would be exposed compelled him to disappear. McDonald wasn’t found--and arrested--until August 2001, more than four years after Pang’s murder.

“Are you on trial for identity theft?” Michael Molfetta, McDonald’s attorney, asked his client after Schwarm was through. “Are you on trial for deceiving your family? Are you the first guy ever to lie to a girl you’re trying to ingratiate yourself [with]?”

The jury of seven men and five women is decidedly skewed to middle age and, therefore, possessed of lots of life experience. That’s why I’d love to hear them discuss whether they think the cad on the stand was also a killer.

Will they believe that a man can drop out of society because he’s fed up with his life? Or will they conclude that, however unclear McDonald’s link to the Pang family, the coincidence of him leaving the area is just too much to swallow?

Toward the end of McDonald’s testimony, Molfetta executed a perfect ploy that, despite drawing Schwarm’s objection and Judge Frank Fasel’s angry admonishment to cut the comedy, couldn’t have been lost on the jury:

“Did you ever read the story of Pinocchio to your kids?” Molfetta asked McDonald.

“Yes,” McDonald replied.

“An infamous liar, wouldn’t you agree?” Molfetta said.

Before McDonald could muster much of a reply, Molfetta asked: “How many people did he kill?”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons at (714) 966-7821 or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.