A man charged with killing a 79-year-old Hollywood woman nearly 44 years ago admitted to police that he killed a Santa Monica couple in 1980 and was involved in a series of burglaries at high-rise apartment complexes, according to a prosecutor, but a defense attorney said there is “reasonable doubt” about his involvement in the 1972 killing.
Harold Holman, 69, was taken from court in a wheelchair to a courtroom lockup to listen to the proceedings on a speaker after telling a judge he was “not going to be part of a media circus” — in an apparent reference to a TV camera being allowed in court for the start of his trial for Helen Meyler’s Aug. 27, 1972, bludgeoning death.
In her opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors Friday they would hear evidence that Holman admitted to Los Angeles police detectives during an interview in state prison in December 2014 that he had been involved in a series of other similar crimes, including the January 1980 bludgeoning deaths of 67-year-old Gertrude Forst and her 72-year-old husband, Otto, in their eighth-floor unit in a Santa Monica apartment building.
Holman acknowledged that he had “made a career out of being a high-rise burglar” in incidents in which law enforcement referred to the culprit as “Spider-Man,” Silverman told the nine-woman, three-man jury.
Holman was initially arrested in 1975 after an LAPD surveillance team that was looking into a series of high-rise residential burglaries watched him scale the outside of a 14-story apartment building and move from balcony to balcony, and he was in custody for several years before resuming his criminal activity, the prosecutor said.
Along with the killings of the Forsts, Holman was involved in two other break-ins in January 1980 — one in which he shot and killed a woman’s 12-year- old Dachshund and the other in which a woman locked herself in a bathroom and screamed for help, Silverman told jurors. The latter resulted in a manhunt in which a Santa Monica police K9 was called in to help Los Angeles police apprehend him, according to the prosecutor.
DNA evidence from a blanket found at the scene of Meyler’s killing was linked to Holman after the Los Angeles Police Department’s Cold Case unit re- opened an investigation into the crime, the prosecutor said.
The widow, who lived alone in a second-floor apartment in a secured building, was found dead in bed with a pillow covering her head, the prosecutor said. Meyler’s apartment had been ransacked, and her assailant had likely entered through a sliding-glass window, Silverman said.
Holman’s attorney, Robin L. Baessler, called it a “tragic case,” but urged jurors to keep an open mind about “whether or not there is reasonable doubt for the charged crime.”
She noted that Meyler was killed 44 years ago in a crime without any eyewitnesses and that Holman was never considered a suspect until LAPD cold case detectives re-opened the case.
The defense lawyer questioned whether Meyler’s killing was that similar to the other crimes.
“I will ask you to conclude that there is reasonable doubt in this case,” Baessler told jurors.
Holman was arrested last year in connection with Meyler’s killing. Jurors did not hear that he was serving a 45-year sentence at the time in connection with the killings of the Forsts and a string of high-rise residential burglaries in the 1980s, but did hear that he was in prison.
The prosecution’s first witness, LAPD Detective Richard Bengtson, testified that he went to a California prison where Holman was being held to collect a DNA sample from Holman in December 2014.
The defendant said during a prison interview with detectives that he had special shoes with suction cups on them and that he wore night-vision goggles during the burglaries, according to Bengtson. On cross-examination, the detective said he had never seen any references to either of those items in police reports about the other crimes.
Testimony in Holman’s trial is set to continue Tuesday.
If convicted, he faces up to life in state prison, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
–City News Service