Witness Describes Killing of Woman

After raping Katrina Montgomery in front of two teenage gang members, Justin Merriman stabbed the 20-year-old woman in the throat and beat her over the head with a crescent wrench as the two watched in horror, one of them testified Friday.

Larry Nicassio, 23, wept as he recalled how Montgomery pleaded for her life while lying wounded on the floor of Merriman’s bedroom on the morning of Nov. 28, 1992.

“She was saying, ‘Please don’t hurt me, Justin,’ ” Nicassio said. But instead, he told jurors, Merriman walked over to a dresser drawer, pulled out a wrench and swung it at Montgomery’s head.

“I asked him to call an ambulance,” Nicassio said. “He said, ‘No, she’s going to rat on me.’ ”

The chilling account brought two jurors to tears during the trial of Merriman’s 52-year-old mother, who also wept as Nicassio described how her son allegedly committed murder.

Beverlee Sue Merriman, a Ventura bookkeeper, is being held on $2-million bail as prosecutors try her on charges of perjury and conspiracy in connection with her 27-year-old son’s murder case.

They allege that she lied to a grand jury about her son’s whereabouts on the morning authorities believe Montgomery was killed, and later assisted in efforts to intimidate witnesses by passing on their names to gang members.

Defense attorneys argue that Beverlee Sue Merriman never lied and was entrapped by overzealous investigators out to get her son.

As her trial got underway in Ventura County Superior Court this week, prosecutors began by presenting evidence of Montgomery’s disappearance in November 1992.

The petite redhead, a student at Santa Monica College at the time, stopped by an Oxnard party on her way to visit a friend in Ventura and was last seen leaving alone about 5 a.m.

According to witnesses, Montgomery was drinking heavily during the party and flirting with Justin Merriman, who was there along with several members of skinhead gangs based in Ventura and Sylmar.

Nicassio and his cousin, Ryan Bush, were members of the Sylmar gang. Nicassio said they decided to spend the night at the Merriman house after losing their ride back to the San Fernando Valley.

The trio arrived before 5 a.m. and went to Justin Merriman’s bedroom, where Nicassio and Bush crashed on the floor with sleeping bags and blankets. Half an hour later, Montgomery showed up.

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According to Nicassio, who at one point was a suspect in the homicide, Merriman and Montgomery got into bed together and a sexual assault began.

“Justin was saying, ‘Come on,’ and she was saying, ‘Not with them in the room,’ ” Nicassio testified.

He told jurors that Merriman quickly became violent, smacking Montgomery in the face as she pleaded with him to leave her alone. He forced her to take off her clothes, then forced her to have sex with him.

At one point, Merriman turned to Nicassio, who was pretending to be asleep, and asked the teenager “if he wanted some.” Nicassio said he didn’t answer.

When Montgomery complained that she was in pain, Nicassio spoke up and asked Merriman to let her go to the bathroom. He said Montgomery got up and dressed.

She was putting on her shoes when Merriman allegedly pulled the knife.

“He stabbed her in the throat,” Nicassio testified. Montgomery fell on her side, pleading with him not to hurt her. Merriman reached for the wrench and hit her, Nicassio said.

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At this point, Nicassio said he stood by a window--too terrified to intervene--and put his hands over his ears so he didn’t have to listen to Montgomery’s labored breathing.

“I couldn’t stand to see what was happening,” he testified, crying and speaking in a hushed voice.

During the testimony, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh repeatedly asked Nicassio why he didn’t defend Montgomery.

“I was afraid of what was going on,” Nicassio said. “Afraid of Justin. I was afraid if I tried to intervene, he would do something to me.”

After the slaying, Nicassio said he told Merriman that he wanted to leave and promised not to say anything about Montgomery. But he said Merriman held the knife up and said: “You’re not [expletive] going anywhere.”

Merriman forced Nicassio and Bush to help dispose of Montgomery’s body, he said. The trio concealed it in a drainpipe along a rural road in Sylmar, then rolled Montgomery’s light blue truck off a cliff in the Angeles National Forest.

Bush and Nicassio dumped the knife, wrench and her belongings in a dumpster. Two days later, he said, he and Bush returned to the roadside site and buried Montgomery.

Nicassio stayed silent about the events until he was arrested two years ago in connection with the case. He convinced prosecutors that he wasn’t the killer, and they dropped murder charges against him.

Last year, he was convicted of dissuading a witness in connection with the Merriman case.

Justin Merriman is scheduled to be tried in September on murder charges in Montgomery’s death.

Nicassio’s testimony was cut short Friday afternoon as Judge James Cloninger launched a contempt hearing against defense attorney Richard Hanawalt, one of two lawyers representing Beverlee Sue Merriman.

Outside the jury’s presence, Cloninger accused Hanawalt, a longtime Ventura criminal defense attorney, of rolling his eyes and making inappropriate gestures in response to his rulings.

“The court simply cannot sit by and let counsel misbehave,” Cloninger said. “I simply will not tolerate it.”

The contempt proceeding was postponed until Monday morning so that Hanawalt’s attorney could prepare a defense to the charges.

Outside the courthouse Friday evening, the 67-year-old lawyer admitted that his conduct “showed poor judgment.” But he also wondered whether Bamieh was trying to get him off the case.

“There is no other attorney in the county that I tangle with more,” Hanawalt said. “There is little doubt the tension is high.”