Man Convicted in 23-Year-Old Murder Case : Verdict: Jury finds Harland Gallion guilty of strangling his mother-in-law. The case hinged on his daughter’s testimony.

VAN NUYS —  In a case that took 23 years to come to trial, a Van Nuys Superior Court jury deliberated less than two days before finding a retired aerospace worker guilty of murdering his mother-in-law.

The conviction Tuesday of Harland Gallion, 66, ended a five-day trial that centered on the emotional testimony of Gallion’s daughter.

Trembling and occasionally weeping through much of her testimony, Catherine Gallion, 43, recounted years of mistreatment by her father that she said so terrified her that she waited more than two decades to tell police that her father had confessed to her that he killed her maternal grandmother.

Catherine Marion Halgren was found slain in the bedroom of her house in the 4300 block of Cahuenga Boulevard in North Hollywood on Sept. 16, 1972.

Catherine Gallion, who was named after her grandmother, testified that her father told her how Halgren fought for her life but that he ultimately strangled her. She also said that Gallion told her he forgot to clean his fingerprints from a cupboard in the slain woman’s home--a major help to the prosecution.

It was Catherine Gallion’s testimony against her father, along with fingerprints linking Harland Gallion to the North Hollywood home, that helped the jury reach its swift verdict, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Cohen.

“I think they believed that he told Catherine he did it, and I assume [the verdict] was based on the fact that there were some things he told Catherine that she couldn’t have made up,” Cohen said.

Gallion, who has diabetes and walks with the aid of a crutch, showed no emotion when the jury’s verdict was read. He is scheduled to be sentenced today. Although current state laws allow the death penalty for murder, the 1972 laws governing this case permit a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Deputy Public Defender Philip R. Boche said he believed the jury had difficulty trying to separate evidence of the murder from accusations of Gallion terrorizing Catherine Gallion and his two other daughters.

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“I think that made it very difficult for the jury . . . to come to an untainted decision,” Boche said. “I was concerned that they wouldn’t be able to keep those things out of their minds in their decisions.”

Gallion’s three daughters gave the most damaging testimony, describing repeated beatings. Catherine Gallion testified that she made repeated attempts to get herself committed to a mental institution or sent to a foster home to escape her father.

Her younger sister, Robin Wood, 42, testified that her father regularly beat her and her sisters with a belt he called “Mr. Destry.” Linda Chant, 46, the eldest of the three, also testified that she watched him beat her mother, Ramona Halgren Gallion. It was Ramona Gallion who found her mother’s body.

Cohen said Gallion killed Halgren, a well-to-do woman with an estate that included a Catalina Island home, for money. When money from her insurance policy ran out around 1974, he divorced Ramona Gallion, who died in 1992.

Catherine Gallion testified that it was in her grandmother’s back yard that her father confessed and mentioned the fingerprints left in the house. During the trial, a Los Angeles police fingerprint expert took Harland Gallion’s prints and later testified that they matched those taken from Halgren’s home in 1972.

Harland Gallion strongly denied murdering his mother-in-law and testified that he was at a country-Western club in Norwalk with his brother, Marven Gallion.