Ex-Boyfriend Faces Trial in Death : Court: Man could get the death penalty if convicted. He claims he shot his former girlfriend in self-defense.

SANTA CLARITA — A man who said he shot and killed his ex-girlfriend in self-defense was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges that he murdered her.

Mark Mearl Bowersock, 39, was described by witnesses during a preliminary hearing in Newhall Municipal Court as a man with a history of violent relationships. He is charged with fatally shooting Laurie Ann Prejean, 36, on Feb. 3 in Saugus while she was making a telephone call at her sister’s home.

If convicted, Bowersock could get the death penalty because of the prosecution’s contention that he killed Prejean in part because she had testified against him at a court hearing.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Chasworth said in court that Prejean had given the testimony just a few days before the slaying at a parole violation hearing. Prejean had testified that Bowersock had been abusive during their relationship.

“It’s hard to believe that did not motivate him to some extent,” Chasworth said.

Bowersock has told officials he shot Prejean in self-defense because she attacked him with a gun.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective testified at the Tuesday hearing that on the day of the slaying, Bowersock packed his belongings, sold his pickup truck to a Simi Valley couple and took a taxi from there to Prejean’s house.

Prejean was talking to a county health-care worker on the telephone about 2:30 p.m. when the call was suddenly interrupted, the detective, Gerald Biehn, said.

The health-care worker, he said, “suddenly heard a female she believed to be Laurie Prejean start saying, ‘Oh, my God! No! No! No!’ and this was repeated six or seven times. Each time Miss Prejean’s voice raised in pitch.”

The health-care worker, he said, then heard a scuffling noise and two quick gunshots. Deputies later found Prejean lying face down in a hallway, shot once in the head and once in the abdomen.

Deputies found an empty handgun in a drawer in Prejean’s room, but there was no evidence it had been fired, Biehn testified.

A female motorist driving past said she saw Bowersock back a car matching Prejean’s silver Hyundai out of the driveway at the house and drive away rapidly, Biehn said.

Bowersock went to Phoenix, where he spent the following day with a female friend, Biehn said. He said Bowersock told the woman that “Laurie assaulted him and he had shot her in self-defense.”

The woman drove Bowersock into the desert, where he buried the gun, Biehn said.

Bowersock called a Los Angeles television station Feb. 8 from a North Hills motel room and agreed to surrender if a reporter would interview him. He directed his comment, “I didn’t do it,” toward a television camera as he was led to a police car.

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Bowersock’s wife, Susan, who remarried him in April in a ceremony at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles, was a reluctant witness at the hearing. She testified that he had assaulted her twice during their first marriage from 1985 to 1990, including one occasion when she said he pointed a gun at her and then at himself upon her saying she was leaving him.

“I love him and he loves me,” said Susan Bowersock during a break in the hearing. She also said she was suffering from a fatal illness.

“What we’re both praying for [is] a little time together,” she said.

At the end of the Tuesday hearing, Judge Floyd Baxter ordered Bowersock to stand trial on charges of murder, first-degree residential robbery and first-degree residential burglary. Bowersock has been held in custody without bail.