Trial Opens in Killings of 2 Set on Fire : Courts: Prosecutor says defendants barricaded victims in closet and set it ablaze. Robbery of cocaine was alleged motive.

Two half brothers accused in the so-called “nightmare on Orange Grove killings” went on trial Thursday on charges that they forced three people into a closet, set them afire and barricaded the door.

The trial of Lonnie Lewis, 32, and Jerome Martin, 25, will feature testimony from the only survivor, who escaped the burning closet Jan. 31, 1989, even though her hands were bound, only to be shot twice by one of her assailants, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Wilkinson in her opening statement to the jury.

The woman played dead and later escaped the dwelling into the arms of a police officer, Wilkinson said.

The trial is expected to feature testimony that the two other victims--Lee Gottstein, 57, and his wife, Sylvia Davis, 45--were operating a lucrative wholesale cocaine business in their Spanish colonial four-plex apartment building on South Orange Grove Avenue in the Mid-City area when they were robbed and killed.

Neighbors told authorities they thought the couple owned a catering business.

In court Thursday, Martin listened impassively to prosecutor Wilkinson’s statement and to one by his lawyer, Michael F. Yamamoto. Lewis was hospitalized this week with a blood clot behind his eye and was not present. The two men are on trial together before separate juries.

The opening statements Thursday applied only to Martin. Lewis’ jury is to hear a separate set of statements Monday when the case reconvenes, said Superior Court Judge Florence Marie Cooper. A third defendant in the case was tried in 1991 and acquitted of all charges except receiving stolen property.

In his statement, Yamamoto denied that Lewis was involved in the slayings of Gottstein and Davis and the earlier rape of the woman who survived.

“There is no question about the (brutality) of the crime or that (the woman who was raped) was terribly burned,” Yamamoto told the jury. But Martin did not rape or murder anyone, the attorney argued.

Wilkinson said that Lewis and Martin were regular cocaine customers of Gottstein and Davis, bought drugs from the pair on the night of the killings, then returned a short time later to rob them.

The two half brothers bound the hands of the couple and the hands of the other woman, who worked as a drug runner, then searched the apartment, gathering up drugs, money and Davis’ jewelry, the prosecutor said.

The men put pillowcases over the heads of the bound trio, Wilkinson said, and forced them upstairs into the bedroom closet, where they were covered with plastic, doused with gasoline and set afire.

The woman who was raped during the course of the robbery will testify that before she pushed her way out of the closet, she heard Gottstein pleading for his life, Wilkinson said.