LOS ANGELES -- The accused killer of Vicki Morgan, mistress to late presidential confidant Alfred Bloomingdale, foreshadowed his plans to kill the woman in conversations the day before her bludgeoning death, the victim's mother testified Monday.
Connie Laney, the opening witness, recalled several discussions in which Marvin Pancoast indicated he planned to kill Miss Morgan, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat at the condominium she shared with the defendant in July 1983. She apparently did not realize the implications of his comments at the time.
'He sounded very aggravated, very annoyed,' Mrs. Laney testified. 'I'd never seen him like that before. And he was crying.
'I said, 'Marvin, 'Why don't you go home?'
'And he said, 'No. I'm not going home. I'm taking care of this tonight, once and for all.'
'And I said, 'I hope you do.''
Mrs. Laney said she and Pancoast picked up Miss Morgan's teenage son, Todd, in West Hollywood later that day, and said Todd's baseball bat was lying on the back shelf of Pancoast's car.
When Todd asked Pancoast why he had his bat, she said, the defendant replied, 'I don't know who I'm going to meet or who I'm going to use it on.'
That evening, Mrs. Laney said, she heard Pancoast ask her daughter to go to his grandmother's home to get some money.
She said Miss Morgan said she'd rather go the next day and Pancoast told her, 'You'll never be up to go in the morning.'
Mrs. Laney also said Pancoast showed her a suicide note Miss Morgan had written.
'I said, 'What's the big deal Marvin?'' she testified. 'And he said, 'You can tell she doesn't want to live.''
Miss Morgan, 30, gained notice in 1982 when she filed a multimillion dollar palimony suit against Bloomingdale, the department store heir who died of cancer in August 1982. A judge later dismissed most of the suit, describing Miss Morgan as a well-paid prostitute.
The case sparked allegations of sexual hijinks among top government officials, and the defense suggested Miss Morgan might have been killed to suppress videotapes showing her at sex parties with Bloomingdale and prominent government figures. The existence of such sextapes has never been proven.
Defense attorney Arthur Barens told reporters outside court Monday that the tapes would be a central issue in the Superior Court trial.
'I can prove that the tapes existed,' he said. 'I have witnesses that will talk about the tapes and then the only issue is, are those witnesses credible?'
Asked if he plans to produce the tapes, he replied, 'I'm not saying that even if I had them, I'd produce them.'
In opening statements Monday, prosecutor Stanley Weisberg said Pancoast, 34, described in detail in several police confessions how he killed Miss Morgan several hours after his conversations with her mother.
'He told police how he waited one hour and 45 minutes,' Weisberg told the jury, 'how he got the lighting right so Vicki wouldn't see him ... how he went into Vicki's bedroom and beat her to death with a baseball bat so she would go to sleep.'
Pancoast, a former talent agency clerk with a history of psychiatric problems, has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to the first-degree murder charges.
Defense attorneys said they will not make an opening statement until the prosecution completes its case, expected to take about one week.
