Jury views Abrams’ videotaped interviews

Alex Coolman

SANTA ANA -- The voice of Steven Allen Abrams, accused murderer of two

children, sounded eerily Monday in a videotaped police interview made

only minutes after he drove his car into a Costa Mesa playground last

year.

As Abrams sat with his head bowed in Orange County Superior Court,

Deputy Dist. Atty. Debora Lloyd played a series of videotapes for the

jury, including one that a Costa Mesa police officer made while speaking

to Abrams after he drove his 1967 Cadillac onto the grounds of the

Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center on May 3, 1999.

“I’ve been thinking about this for five years,� Abrams tells the

officer in the videotape. “I just wanted to send them a message for what

they did to me. They took my life. I can’t live like this.�

Abrams is charged with two counts of murder and seven counts of

attempted murder for his actions, which killed Sierra Soto, 4, and

Brandon Wiener, 3, and injured several other people.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges by reason of insanity. He

faces the death penalty if he is found to be guilty and mentally

competent.

In the tapes played Monday, Abrams spoke with disturbing clarity and

seemingly little confusion about the physical details of his actions. He

described the way he cruised past the preschool, then returned and drove

at high speed onto its crowded playground.

In the chilling footage, Abrams acknowledges that his actions could

have consequences, telling police officers that he knows he could face

the death penalty.

Asked the explanation for his actions, though, Abrams began to speak

about being controlled by brain waves produced by an elaborate conspiracy

of city officials, neighborhood watch organizers and police.

“They’re all working against me,� said Abrams, who went on to explain

that he believed virtually every unpleasant detail of his life -- from

problems with his car to the failure of a romance -- was an attempt by

the “brain wave controllers� to manipulate him.

Lloyd also played a tape made at Costa Mesa police headquarters on the

night of May 3, 1999, in which an investigator asked Abrams about the

events of his life leading up to his actions.

In that tape, Abrams explained -- in a disjointed, repetitive way --

that he believed he was being programmed by unseen brain wave

manipulators to kill the undesirable members of society.

“They were talking to me directly into my brain,� Abrams said, filling

him with “rage� toward the people in his life who made him angry.

It was in order to break the control of the brain wave manipulators,

Abrams said, that he made his assault on the preschool. Precisely because

“executing innocent children,� as he called it, would be so shocking that

the action would make the people who controlled him realize they had to

change their policies.

“I’m like a missile that goes astray,� he says. “They should have

pressed self-destruct. But I guess they can’t.�

In addition to the tapes of the interviews with Abrams, Lloyd brought

to the stand Danielle Diaz-Knecht, the teacher’s aide who was injured

when Abrams drove onto the playground.

The testimony of Diaz-Knecht, who said she remembered the wheel of

Abrams car rushing toward her and awoke to hear the screams of children,

was difficult for her. She left the courtroom sobbing convulsively.

Lloyd said the prosecution’s case is likely to conclude early Tuesday.

Public defender Leonard Gumlia said the defense will be very brief.

If the jury concludes that Abrams is guilty, he could be given the

death penalty. However, his mental competence is very much at issue.

Gumlia argued in his opening statement that Abrams’ convictions about

brain wave control are the product of paranoid schizophrenia.