Skinhead Is Guilty of Slaying Teen

A skinhead gang member was found guilty Monday of fatally stabbing a teenage girl trying to flee a Ventura motel room seven years ago.

A Ventura County jury convicted David Ziesmer, 32, of Oxnard of first-degree murder in the slaying of 17-year-old Nichole Hendrix of Ventura. They also found he kidnapped and robbed her, circumstances that make him eligible for a death sentence.

The trial’s penalty phase is set to begin next Monday.

“This will bring the first measure of closure for Nichole’s family.... They’ve been here every day for the last five years,” Deputy Dist. Atty. William Haney said after the verdict. “Obviously, we’re going to seek the death penalty.”

The victim’s mother, Shelly Holland, declined to comment until after sentencing. “It’s not over yet,” she said.

Previously, Holland described how she had frantically searched in roadside ditches and morgues for her daughter. Hendrix’s skeletal remains were found in the mountains above Ojai six months after she had called from the City Center Motel in October 1998 to say she would be home soon.

Moments after Hendrix placed that call, Ziesmer decided to kill her, according to testimony. He was concerned she would tell police that he, gang member Michael Bridgeford and gang associate Bridget Callahan, a friend of Hendrix’s, were using the motel room to sell stolen goods.

During the trial, Bridgeford testified that he helped Ziesmer kill Hendrix. High on drugs, the pair believed Hendrix was a police informant, “a rat” who had to be taken care of, Bridgeford said. Along with Callahan, they drove Hendrix, who was passed out on drugs, to the Ventura motel.

Bridgeford, 28, said he and Ziesmer locked her in a closet and tried to give her more drugs to keep her unconscious. But Hendrix came to, called home and tried to leave. Bridgeford said Ziesmer grabbed a red Swiss army knife and began slashing at her.

“He ordered me to hold her down,” Bridgeford testified. “He stabbed her in the eye. He stabbed her in the ear. He stabbed her in the heart. He was doing it until she died.”

Bridgeford has also confessed to helping dispose of the body.

He is serving a 58-year sentence in state prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder two years ago in exchange for prosecutors dropping two special circumstance allegations that could have resulted in a death sentence.

Ziesmer is one of six defendants indicted in the slaying of Hendrix.

Four have pleaded guilty. Callahan, who was convicted of murder in 2002, has been granted a new trial because a judge found that her attorney failed to competently represent her.

Defense attorney John Pinnell said Ziesmer should not be sentenced to death, because Bridgeford received a prison term. That would be unequal treatment for the same crime, he argued.

“Mr. Bridgeford was involved certainly as much as Mr. Ziesmer,” Pinnell said in an interview. “And I still don’t see the special circumstances being true. There was never any kidnapping or robbery. And the physical evidence tended to indicate that Mr. Bridgeford was the murderer.”

Ziesmer was also convicted of street terrorism, conspiring with others to dispose of Hendrix’s body and soliciting another gang member to kill Callahan.

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this report.