‘Spontaneous Attack’

SANTA ANA — An attorney for John J. Famalaro admitted for the first time in court Wednesday that her client killed Denise Huber, but argued that he picked up the 23-year-old woman with the intention of seducing her, not killing her.

During closing arguments in the high-profile trial, Deputy Public Defender Denise Gragg presented a scenario of what the defense contends happened the night Huber disappeared. She argued that Famalaro did not kidnap or sexually assault Huber but struck her with a hammer in a “spontaneous attack” because Huber was running from him or resisting a sexual overture. She said that when Huber fell, unconscious, Famalaro panicked.

“At some point, he decided to kill her,” Gragg said to the jury.

Gragg said the Newport Beach woman had had a flat tire on the Costa Mesa Freeway on June 3, 1991, when she encountered Famalaro in a friendly enough manner. She said the stranded motorist, needing help, went willingly with Famalaro, and she suggested that Huber’s judgment might have been impaired by drinks she had had earlier that evening. She said Huber’s “misplaced trust” led to her violent death.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Evans told the jury that the victim was abducted from the freeway, perhaps dragged, and taken to Famalaro’s Laguna Hills warehouse against her will. There, Famalaro sodomized her and killed her, Evans said.

“Denise Huber did not go voluntarily,” Evans said. “That did not happen, not on this day, not on this planet, not in this lifetime.”

Evans contends that the backs of the high-heeled shoes Huber was wearing became scraped and damaged during a struggle with Famalaro. But his attorneys contend they may have been damaged as the victim looked for help after her car was disabled.

The defense used a similar pair of shoes to show how they could have been damaged if she had hiked up and down the freeway embankment, a display Evans called “a fiasco.” Both pairs of shoes were displayed to the jury Wednesday.

The prosecutor showed a stoned-faced jury grisly photographs of Huber’s nude and handcuffed body, found frozen in a freezer at Famalaro’s Arizona home three years later. He also held up a roofer’s nail puller that he said was used to crush her skull at least 31 times.

“This is a victim who not only had her head caved in, but was blindfolded, probably gagged, handcuffed, had her clothing removed and had bags placed over her head in a pretty calculated manner,” he said.

Gragg maintains that Huber was killed before she was stripped, gagged and blindfolded.

With the murder charge not contested, the allegations of kidnapping and sodomy have been the focus of the trial. If the jury, which is expected to begin deliberating today, finds Famalaro guilty of first-degree murder and at least one of the other allegations, the 39-year-old will be eligible for the death penalty.

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Gragg asked the jury to set aside their own revulsion when deliberating and to simply look at the facts.

“You have to be able to put those emotions away and look at what was proven in this courtroom,” she said.

Gragg also said the killing was not premeditated, and that the absence of injury other than to the head indicates there was not a kidnapping or a struggle.

Co-defense attorney Leonard Gumlia, focusing on the sodomy allegations, told the jury that there is no conclusive proof that samples collected from the victim’s body contain sperm. He pointed out that the samples also do not show any of his client’s DNA, only the victim’s.

Each side put two witnesses on the stand to testify about those samples. The prosecution’s witnesses testified that some were definitely sperm, while defense witnesses said they could not be positively confirmed as sperm.

The prosecutor said there is no doubt that Famalaro sexually assaulted Huber.

“Why, on God’s green Earth, does he have to remove her underwear if not to commit a sexual assault?” he asked the jury.

Evans also said Famalaro then kept the victim’s body in a freezer for three years as a “trophy,” a theory he said is further bolstered by the defendant’s collecting of newspaper accounts and a television report on Huber’s disappearance. Famalaro also kept the weapon used in the killing and the victim’s clothes and purse.

“Those papers and that videotape are a trophy to remind him of the good time he had that night,” Evans said.

But Gragg said the “trophy explanation makes no sense whatsoever given the number of items he saved. That probably points to something else that’s going on.” She did not elaborate.

It was a long day in court for Huber’s family, who has attended each day of the two-week trial. The victim’s father, Dennis Huber, called the defense’s version of events “unbelievable.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that she was kidnapped,” he said. “She would not go with this guy. She had too much sense.”

The defendant’s mother, Anne Famalaro, likened listening to Evans’ remarks to “open-heart surgery without the benefit of anesthesia.”

Evans will conclude his closing remarks this morning.