Slain Woman’s Parents Testify in Penalty Phase

Here are the things Had Burger misses most about his daughter.

He misses her laugh and her smile, Burger told jurors who will decide the penalty for the man convicted of killing 44-year-old Cynthia Burger. He misses the dinners they had together, the simple times they shared as a family.

“She was a beautiful girl, she was all sunshine,” Burger said Tuesday, fighting back tears. “All of us died a little [when Cynthia died]. There’s an emptiness there that can never be filled.”

Jurors will recommend either death or life in prison without parole for Michael Schultz, 33, convicted last month of raping and strangling Cynthia Burger after he entered her Port Hueneme condominium a decade ago.

Attorneys for Schultz intend to present evidence of their client’s troubled upbringing -- he was the youngest child in a family torn by violence and mental illness -- in an attempt to spare his life.

But prosecutors launched into the penalty phase by portraying Schultz as a cold-blooded killer, a man with a violent past who deserves to die for the slaying.

Ventura Police Officer Alex Marquez told jurors about a violent encounter in 1996 after he and another officer caught Schultz breaking into vending machines on a local school campus.

Marquez, who has since had nine surgeries to repair damage sustained during the altercation, said Schultz twice lunged at him in attempts to wrest the officer’s handgun from its holster.

“It was the most violent confrontation I ever had in my life,” Marquez said.

Other witnesses followed, including Schultz’s former fiancee, Therresa Mooney, who provided the tip that helped investigators solve the killing six years after it occurred.

Earlier, Mooney testified Schultz had admitted to her that he killed Burger.

In emotional testimony, Burger’s parents testified about what the loss of their daughter meant to them.

Virgie Burger talked about the birth of her daughter.

But she also talked about her daughter’s death, how she learned that Cynthia had been found raped and strangled in a bathtub. And she learned how the killer set fire to the condominium.

“It was painful to hear all that she went through,” Virgie Burger said. “She was so beautiful inside and out ... she didn’t deserve that.”